Repetition and 
Parallelism 

In English Verse 



C. Alphonso Smith 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



yA... ©ajning]^! !f a, 

. Shelf_1?.sS5 Z 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



Repetition and Parallelism 



IN English Verse 



A STUDY IN THE TECHNIQUE OF POETRY 



C." ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE LOUISIANA STATE 

UNIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE, BATON ROUGE, AND 

FORMER ASSISTANT IN ENGLISH IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK AND NEW ORLEANS 

UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1894 



•^^ 






i 



<?)£ 



Copyright, 1894, by 
C. ALPHONSO SMITH 



***I520 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introduction ; Nature and Agencies of Repetition and Par- 
allelism ; Illustrations 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Greek Influence : Repetition in the English Elegy 32 

CHAPTER III. 

Finnish Influence: Repetition in '* Hiawatha" and other 

Finnish Imitations 38 

CHAPTER IV. 
Repetition in the Poems of Edgar Allan Poe 44 

CHAPTER V. 
Repetition in the Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne . . 57 



44 |i?Dr man is but bfs min&, an& as bis mfn& is 
Jl tempered an& qualifieo, so are bis speecbes 
an& language at large ; an& bis inwarb 
conceits be tbe metal of bis mint>, an& bis 
manner of utterance tbe ver^ warp anJ) woof 
of bis conceits, more plain or buss an& in* 
tricate or otberwise attecteD after tbe rate." 

PUTTENHAM, On StYLE. 



REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 
IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



CHAPTER I. 

Introduction ; Nature and Agencies of Repetition 
AND Parallelism ; Illustrations. 

THIS little treatise is the fruit of a conviction that the cur- 
rent works on English metre, even the most exhaustive of 
them, do not adequately set forth some of the most important 
elements that enter into the subject of English verse. If the 
reader has had frequent occasion to subject some favorite 
poem, long stored in the memory, to the traditional metrical 
analysis, however rigid, he has doubtless more than once been 
convinced that the structural peculiarities most intimately 
characterizing the given poem are just those that the analysis 
has left untouched. Has he not in many cases felt that even 
the lines cited in works on metre to illustrate some principle 
of verse owe their distinctive harmony or rhythm to devices 
wholly different from those that the writer may be empha- 
sizing ? 

Prose has been more fortunate in this respect than poetry, 
for the principles of prose style have been investigated and 
formulated with a detail and comprehensiveness not to be 
found in even the most exhaustive works on metre. It is true 
that Puttenham's ^r/^ ^/ English Foesie (1589) antedates by 
more than two centuries any investigation of prose comparable 
with it in scope ; but the study of prose, really beginning with 



8 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Drake's Essays (vol. ii., 1805) and ending with the recent con- 
tributions of Renton, Earle, and Minto, has more than made 
amends for a tardy start. Do we not know the stylistic pecul- 
iarities of our great prose writers better than we know those 
of our great poets ? Do not even our school rhetorics teach 
us to discriminate the style of Macaulay from that of Ruskin, 
or Carlyle, or Addison, or De Quincey, better than works 
on poetics teach us to discriminate the style of Long- 
fellow from that of Tennyson, or Swinburne, or Whittier, or 
Bryant ? 

It seems to be assumed, tacitly at least, that the style of 
a poet is not so characteristically individual as the style of a 
prose writer, that conformity to the laws of metre and rhythm 
has a levelling tendency, and that to estimate aright the formal* 
peculiarities of a poet's style one has but to classify and tabu- 
late the feet employed, to see how many verses occur in each 
stanza, and to observe by what bindemittel at the end the lines 
or stanzas are united. Scansion, however, even in its most 
comprehensive sense, does hardly more for poetry than parsing 
does for prose ; the laws of prosody being to the poet what the 
laws of grammar are to the prose writer. 

This is recognized in the study of prose ; hence, where 
grammar ends, rhetoric begins. The one insists that the writer 
shall use a subject and predicate in each sentence ; the other 
offers him the option of making this sentence long or short, 
prominent or subordinate, periodic or loose, affirmative or 
interrogative, balanced or not, as the writer pleases. So, too, 
the poet must use feet of some sort in his verses, and verses of 
some sort in his stanzas ; but there are various devices of con- 
struction belonging to the domain of metre and rhythm that 
do not fall within any of the categories mentioned. These 
devices may be said to constitute the rhetoric of poetry, the 

* I am dealing throughout with formal effects, with varieties of versifica- 
tion [Ja po^tique) rather than of poetry {la pohie)* 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 9 

employment of them being entirely at the option of the poet. 
Yet, like the periodic sentence in prose, they are found in all 
periods of English poetry, and are used by some poets with a 
frequency and an effect that justify the critic in styling them 
characteristic. 

Our rhetorics, in other words, have been constructed from a 
study of prose, whereas the devices permissible to poetry have 
been almost wholly overlooked.* 

It is my purpose in the following pages to direct attention 
to two structural peculiarities, occurring chiefly in lyric poetry, 
that seem to me to be deserving of much more generous 
recognition than has hitherto been accorded them. The rhet- 
orics, it is true, usually devote several paragraphs to repetition 
and parallelism, the latter being treated under the head of the 
balanced sentence, but it is to be observed that the functions 
of repetition and parallelism are widely different in prose and 
verse. 

In prose, a word or group of words is repeated for emphasis ; 
whereas in verse, repetition is chiefly employed not for empha- 
sis (compare the use of the refrain), but for melody or rhythm, 
for continuousness or sonorousness of effect, for unity of im- 
pression, for banding lines or stanzas, and for the more inde- 
finable though not less important purposes of suggestiveness. 

Parallelism is only another form of repetition, but in this 

* The following sentence, a model of penetration and comprehensive- 
ness, shows that in France at least the study of poetic form has not been 
neglected : ''Le vers de Baudelaire, qui accepte les principales ameliora- 
tions ou reformes romantiques, telles que la rime riche, la mobilite facul- 
tative de la cesure, le rejet, Tenjambement, I'emploi du mot propre ou 
technique, le rhythme ferme et plein, la coulee d^un seul jet du grand 
alexandrin, tout le savant mecanisme de prosodie et de coupe dans la stance 
et la strophe, a cependant son architectonique particuliere, ses formules 
individuelles^ sa structure reconttaissable, ses secrets de metier, son tour de 
main si Von peut s\xprimer ainsi^ et sa marque C. B, qu'on retrouve tou- 
jour s appliqu^e sur une rime ou sur un hdmistiche,''' — GautiEr's Notice to 
Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mai (1868). 



lo REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

case constructions are repeated, not words. Its uses, like those 
of repetition proper, may be illustrated more easily than stated. 
Here again, however, a note of caution must be sounded 
against confounding the widely different functions of parallel- 
ism in prose and verse. In prose, parallelism of construction^ 
whether of a word or group of v/ords, serves to contrast and 
distinguish. " Studious likeness of construction, aided fre- 
quently by antithesis, is a favorite means of giving special 
distinction to related thoughts, by setting them in sharp relief 
against each other. This is called Balanced Structure." * 

In poetry, however, balance, or parallelism, belongs properly 
to the domain of rhythm. It is usually found joined with 
repetition. The following stanza will illustrate : 

{a) " And ^/Z my days are trances, (a) 

(a) And all my nightly dreams (d) 
{b) Are where thy dark eye glances, {a) 

(b) And where thy footstep gleams, — {b) 

(c) In whal ethereal dances, (a) 
(c) By what eternal streams." (b) 

POE, To One in Paradise, 

One does not have to put his ear very close to these lines to 
perceive that their rich harmony is due to the perfect art with 
which Poe has here blended the effects of repetition and par- 
allelism. Not content with banding his lines by alternate 
rimes at the end, he has woven them into a closer unity by a 
series of successive repetitions at the beginning. Denoting 
the sequence of rimes by the series ababab^ we denote also the 
sequence of initial repetitions by the series aabbcc. The last 
two couplets {bbcc), if we may use the term of lines banded 
not by rime but by repetition, furnish examples of repetition 
passing almost insensibly into paralleHsm, the parallelism of 
the one being that of adverbial clauses introduced by ** where," 
the parallelism of the other being that of prepositional phrases 

*Genung, Practical Elements of Rhetoric ^ p. 164. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. II 

having in common the word " what.'* * In the first couplet {ad)^ 
the word " days/' unlike the words " dark eye " and " ethereal," 
is not exactly paralleled in the succeeding line ; there is, of 
course, a correspondence between ^' days " and *' nightly dreams," 
but the relationship is that of thought antithesis rather than 
of structural parallelism. The concluding couplet is intensely 
lyrical ; the thought appears to pause, then circle backward to 
the idea conveyed in the closing part of the preceding line. 
All verbs, with the noisy activities that they express, are ban- 
ished, and the emotion of the poet finds utterance more in 
vague suggestiveness and subtle music than in the presentation 
of distinct ideas. The same effects could hardly be produced 
without recourse to some form of repetition or parallelism. 

In the two following stanzas, initial repetition is employed 
(i) to band successive rimed lines, and (2) to band successive 
unrimed lines : 

*• Sphere all your lights around, above ; 

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; 
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 
My friend, the brother of my love." 

Tennyson, In Memoriam, ix, 4. 

*' I hear the noise about thy keel ; 

I hear the bell struck in the night : 

I see the cabin-window bright ; 
I see the sailor at the wheel." f 

lb., X. I. 

* The parallelism of a phrase may of course pass into the parallelism of 

a clause, and vice versa. Thus Poe originally wrote : 

" To the beauty of fair Greece 

And the grandeur of old Rome ; " 
but finally : 

" To the glory that was Greece, 

And the grandeur that was Rome." 

f Cf. Platen's Chor der Seraphim (in Christnacht) : 

" Vergesst der Schmerzen jeden, 

Vergesst den tiefen Fall, 

Und lebt mit uns in Eden, 

Und lebt viit ims im All." 



12 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

The three following stanzas from The Ancient Mariner illus- 
trate the use of parallelism and repetition in alternate lines. 
In the first stanza, there is complete repetition of the first line 
in the third ; in the second stanza, there is complete parallel- 
ism, word for word, between the first line and the third ; while 
in the third stanza, the first and third lines show a blending of 
repetition and parallelism, " sea '* and "' deck " being the par- 
allel words that are not repeated : 

" Water, water, everywhere, 
And all the boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink." 



Part iii. 9. 



** Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship. 
Yet she sailed softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze- 
On me alone it blew."* 



** I looked upon the rotting sea, 
And drew my eyes away ; 
I looked tipon the rotting deck, 
And there the dead men lay." 



Part vi. 13, 



Part iv. 5. 



Successive repetition occurs more frequently in the older 
ballads and romances than in any other distinct variety of 
verse. If the first line of the stanza contains the direct words 
of a speaker — usually in the form of command, entreaty, 
address, or merely of unlooked-for announcement — the second 
line generally repeats m whole or in part the most emphatic of 

* Cf. the song in Shakespeare, T. N., ii. 4, beginning : 

^'Corne away, come away, death, 

And in sad cypress let me be laid ; 
Fly away, fly azvay, breath ; 

I am slain by a fair cruel maid." 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



13 



the words that have preceded. The consistency with which 
this form of repetition is carried out in the older poetry of the 
language may be said to constitute almost a formula for ballad 
structure. The following illustrations are taken from the 
Percy Reliques : 

" * Nowe Christ thee save, good Kyng Adl^nd, 
Nowe Christ thee save and see.* 
Sayd, * You be welcome, Kyng Estmere, 
Right hartilye to mee.' " 

King Estmere, 10. 

'* * Tydinges, tydinges, Kyng Estmere ! ' 

* What tydinges nowe, my boye ? ' 

* O tydinges I can tell to you, 
That will you sore annoye.'" 

/^., 30. 

*' Sayes, * Stable thy steede, thou proud harper, 
Go stable him in the stalle ; 
Itt doth not beseeme a proud harper 
To stable him in a kyngs halle.' " 



Ib„ 50. 



** 'Now stay thy harpe, thou proud harper, 
Now stay thy harpe, I say ; 
For an thou playest as thou beginnest, 
Thou'lt till my bride awaye.' " 



lb., S7. 



" ' Good 7norr owe, good fellowe,' sayd Robin so fayre, 

* Good morrow e, good fellow e' quoth he. 

' Methinks by this bowe thou beares in thy hande, 
A good archere thou sholdst bee.' " 

Robin Hood aftd Guy of Gisborne, 24. 

** * Leade on, good fellowe,' quoth Robin Hood, 

* Leade on, I doe bidd thee.' 

* Nay, by my faith, good fellowe,' hee sayd, 

* My leader thou shalt bee.' " 

lb., 30. 



14 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

** ' Nowe nay, 7iowe 7tay, thou gentle knight, 
Nowe nay, this may not bee ; 
For aye sould I tint my maiden fame, 
If alone I should wend with thee.* " 

The Child of Elle, 17. 

" * Nowe loud thou lyesf, Sir John the knighte, 
Nowe thou doest lye of mee ; 
A knight mee got, and a ladye me bore, 
See never did none by thee.' "* 

•* ' But light nowe downe, my Ladye faire. 
Light downe, and hold my steed. 
While I and this discourteous knighte 
Doe trye this arduous deede/ " 

lb. 32, 33- 

** ' O say not soe, thou holy friar ; 
I pray thee, say not soe : 
For since my true-love dyed for mee, 
*Tis meet my tears should flow.* " 

The Friar of Orders Gray, 14. 

** * O stay me not, thou holy friar ; 
O stay me not, I pray ; 
No drizzly rain that falls on me. 
Can wash my fault away.*'* 

Ib„ 23. 

•' * But co7ne thou hither, my little foot-page. 
Come thou hither unto mee ; 

* C/. Scott's— 

*' * Thou liest, thou liest, thou little foot-page, 
Loud dost thou lie to me ! 
For that knight is cold, and low laid in the mould. 
All under the Eildon-tree." 

The Eve of St. fohn, 27. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 15 

To maister Norton thou must goe 
In all the haste that ever may bee.* " * 

The Rising in the North, 9. 

*' * A boone, a boone, O Kinge Arthure, 
I beg a boone of thee ; 
Avenge me of a carlish knighte, 
Who hath shent my love and mee.' " 

The Marriage of Sir Gawaine, I. 5. 

" ' O call now downe my faire ladye, 
O call her downe to mee ; 
And tell my ladye gay how sicke, 
And like to die I bee.'" 

Old Robin of Portingale, 15. 

" * Come riddle my riddle, dear mother,' he sayd, 

* And riddle us both as one ; 

Whether I shall marrye with faire Ellinor, 
And let the browne girl alone ? ' " 

Lord Thomas ajid Fair Ellinor, 2. 

** * What neweSy what newes, Lord Thomas,' she sayd, 
' What newes dost thou bring to mee ? ' 

* I am come to bid thee to my wedding. 
And that is bad newes for thee.' " 

lb,, 6. 

** ' Despise her not, fair Ellin,' he sayd, 

* Despise her not unto mee ; 
For better I love thy little finger 
Than all her whole bod^e.' " 

lb,, 14. 

In the citations just given, the quick successions of the 

* Cf Scott's— 

** ' Come thou hither, my little foot-page, 
Come hither to my knee ; 
Though thou art young and tender of age, 
I think thou art true to me.' " 

The Eve of St. fohn, 8. 



l6 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

repeated words, besides adding an element of quaintness, lend 
a characteristic swing and rapidity to the movement of the 
verse that could hardly otherwise be secured. In alternate 
repetition the effects are usually more subdued, the turiiings 
being longer and slower. Compare Tennyson's lines, ni 
which alternate repetition is united with perfect parallelism : 

*' O well for the fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play ! 
O well for the sailor lad, 
That he sings in his boat on the bay ! " 

In the following lines Chaucer has employed the same 
general structure but with more repetition and less parallelism : 

{a) " For out of olde feldes, as men seith, 

(f)) Cometh al this newe corn fro year to yere ; 

{a) And out of olde bokes, in good feith, 

{b) Cometh al this newe science that men lere." 

Parlement of Foules, 11. 22-25. 

Byron, especially in his earlier poems, made frequent use of 
repetition, both successive and alternate. The following five 
stanzas from his lines To E77tma, each following the general 
scheme abac^ exhibit a studious attempt to reenforce by repeti- 
tion (with but slight admixture of parallelism) the rime of 
the first and third lines of each stanza : 

" Siiice now the hour is come at last 

When you must quit your anxious lover ; 
Since now our dream of bliss is past. 
One pang, my girl, and all is over. 



O'er fields through which we used to run, 
And spend the hours in childish play ; 

O'er shades where, when our race was done, 
Reposing on my breast you lay ; 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, ly 

" See still the little painted bark, 

In which I row'd you o'er the lake ; 

See there^ high waving o'er the park. 

The elm I clamber'd for your sake. 

*' These times are past — our joys are gone, 
You leave me, leave this happy vale ; 
These scenes I must retrace alone : 
Without thee, what will they avail ? 

** This is the deepest of our woes, 

For this these tears our cheeks bedew ; 
This is of love the final close, 
O God ! the fondest, last adieu ! " * 

Victor Hugo's lyric poems abound with examples of most 
subtle effects produced by varieties of repetition, and afford 
many illustrations of the skilful mingling of alternate with 
successive repetition. In the poem beginning ** Puisque nos 
heures sont remplies," f the first seven stanzas observe alter- 
nate initial repetition, ** Puisque " being the repetend employed. 
The first stanza will illustrate : 

** Puisque nos heures sont remplies 
De trouble et de calamites ; 
Puisque les choses que tu lies 
Se detachent de tous cotes." 

* Cf. Shelley's Lines (1822) : 

'* When the lamp is shattered, 

The light in the dust lies dead ; 
When the cloud is scattered, 

The rainbow's glory is shed ; 
When the lute is broken, 

Sweet notes are remembered not ; 
When the lips have spoken, 
Loved accents are soon forgot." 
f Les Chants du Crepuscule^ xxix. (1835). 



1 8 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

In the eighth stanza the order suddenly changes from alter- 
nate to successive correspondence, from abac^ to aabb : 

(a) " Mets ton esprit hors de ce monde ! 

(a) Mets ton reve ailleurs qu* ici-bas ! 

(b) Ta perle n'est pas dans notre onde ! 
(b) Ton sentier n'est point sous nos pas ! " 

To appreciate fully the fine effect of this device, one must 
read the whole poem and compare it with other poems of simi- 
lar structure. The first seven stanzas constitute, of course, a 
periodic sentence, but the strain that would otherwise be felt in 
holding a thought suspended through so many stanzas is light- 
ened by the evenly terraced structure of the stanzas. In cases 
of this sort, repetition helps to band not only lines but whole 
stanzas. It thus performs, in part, the function not only of rime 
but of the refrain as well. Like the runners in Lucretius — 

*'Et, quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt,'* — 

such repetitions serve to pass the melody down and on, from the 
beginning of the poem to the end. 

Repetition, moreover, has certain liberties not accorded to 
rime, for rime is usually banished to the end of the line or must 
( recur at fixed sectional intervals within the line ; whereas repe- 
tition may reenforce the structure of a stanza at any point. It 
is to be observed, also, that the study of repetition in the works 
of any poet brings us much nearer to a right appreciation of 
his characteristic style than the study of his rimes, his line- 
lengths, or his poetic feet can ever do. For in repetition we 
trace the precise movement of the poet's thought, we gauge his 
pace ; and this cannot be shown with equal clearness in any 
other way. 

In the following lines I am convinced that Schipper has 
failed to note the influence of parallelism in binding two stan- 
zas together : 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, ip 

** I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays, 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

" I have been laughi7ig, I have bee7t carousing; 
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 

Lamb, The Old Familiar Faces, 

Schipper's comment upon these lines is that they illustrate 
how, even in purely unrimed verses, the repetition of a refrain 
at definite intervals may suffice to bind the stanzas together.'^' 
The principle is true, but the lines cited show rather that poets 
who adopt such strophic structures fall, perhaps unconsciously^ 
into the employment of some form of parallelism, so as to reen- 
force the weakened rhythm. 

In the Middle English poem entitled Wolcum Yol\ (Wel- 
come Yule), initial repetition reenforces the refrain ; 

*' Wolcum be thu, hevene kyng, 
Wolcum, born in on morwenyng, 
Wolcum for hom we xal syng, 
Wolcu7n yoL 

** Wolctcfn be ye Stefne and Jon, 
Wolcu77i Innocentes everychon, 
Wolcu7n Thomas martyr on, 
Wolcu77t yoW 

Compare also the following stanza among many similar ones 
from Victor Hugo's Le Chassetcr Noir^ the title being also the 
refrain : 

'* Chasse le daim, chasse la biche, 
Cours dans les bois, cours dans la friche, 

Voici le soir. 
Chasse le Czar, chasse I'Autriche, 
O Chasseur Noir I " 

* Englische Metrik, II. 464. The refrain is, of course, the line, 
*' All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 

f Printed in Ritson, Ancient Songs, I. 140. 



I 



20 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

The four stanzas composing Lovelace's To Althea from 
Prison end each as follows : 

" The birds that wanton in the aire 
Know no such liber tie,'' 

*' Fishes that tipple in the deepe 
Know 710 such libertle,'' 

*' Th' enlarged windes that curie the flood 
Know no suck liberties'* 

•' Angels alone that soare above 
Enjoy such liber tie'' 

Here the parallel relative clauses aid the effect of the refrain. 

In each of the two following stanzas Spenser has employed 
a curious system of interwoven parallelisms and repetitions. 
He bands the two stanzas by repeating *^ waste/* "starve," 
and "dye:" 

" Now doe I nightly waste, wanting my kindly reste, 
Now doe I daily starve, wanting my lively foode, 
Now doe I always dye, wanting my timely mirth. 

" And if I waste, who will bewaile my heavy chance ? 
And if I starve, who will recorde my cursed end ? 
And if I dye, who will say, * this was immerito * ? " 
lambicum Triinetrum (written in a letter 

to Harvey, October 16, 1579 : last two stanzas). 

Note also the perfect correspondences, word for word, 
between these stanzas from Suckling's Aglaura : 

"Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? 
Prithee why so pale ? 
Will, when looking well can't move her, 
Looking ill prevail ? 
Prithee why so pale ? 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 2i 

** Why so dull and mute, young- sinner ? 
Prithee why so mute ? 
Will, when speaking well can't win her. 
Saying nothing do't ? 
Prithee why so mute ? " 

It is evident that a structure so highly artificial as the fore- 
going must be used with caution, except in the lighter veins of 
verse. In the three following stanzas, banded by a similar 
though not so intricate system of correspondences, the 
mechanical movement of the verse suggests the ridiculous. It 
is to be feared that the pathos of the " fayre ladye's " situation 
is lost in the artificiality of the narrator's manner : 

" The Soldan strucke the knighte a stroke 
That made him reele asyde : 
Then woe-begone was that fayre ladye, 
And thrice she deeply sighde. 

'* The Soldan strucke a second stroke, 
And made the bloude to flowe : 
All pale and wan was that ladye fayre. 
And thrice she wept for woe. 

** The Soldan strucke a third fell stroke. 

Which brought the knighte on his knee: 
Sad sorrow pierced that ladyes heart. 
And she shriekt loud shriekings three." 

Sir Caulifie {Percy Reliques), 

The danger of excessive repetition has never been more art. 
fully shown than in the two following stanzas, taken from an 
anonymous parody of Ronsard's style. It occurs in Tarlto7i's 
News out of Purgatory (1590), and is headed, '^ Ronsards 
Description of his Mistris^'' etc. : 

*' Downe I sat, 
I sat downe. 

Where Flora had bestowed her graces : - 



22 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Greene it was, 

It was greene, 

Far passing other places : 

For art and nature did combine 
With sights to witch the gasers eyne. 

•'There I sat, 
I sat there, 

Viewing of this pride of places : 
Straight I saw, 
I saw straight, 

The sweetest fair of all faces : 
Such a face as did containe 
Heavens shine in every veine."* 

It is doubtless to Ronsard's influence that Lodge f owes 
such measures as, 

"Phoebe sat, 
Sweet she sat. 

Sweet sat Phoebe when I saw her," etc. 

*' Phoebe sat, 
By a fount. 

Sitting by a fount I spied her," etc. 

MONTANUS's Sonnet, in Rosalynd, 

* There is evidently some connection between this parody and the 
Madrigal f first printed in England^ s Helicon^ and attributed to Greene. 
The first stanza of the Madrigal is as follows : 
** It was a vallie gawdie greene, 
Where Dian at the fount was seene ; 
Greene it was 
And did surpass 
All other of Dianaes bowers, 
In the pride of Floraes flowers." 

Has this similarity ever been noted ? 

f" Lodge's lyrical measures have frequently a flavor of Ronsard. He 
does not adopt the metres invented by Ronsard, but his own inventions 
seem to have been inspired by Ronsard's example." 

Poems chiefly Lyrical from Rof?iances and Prose Tracts of the 
Elizabethan Age. Ed. by A. H. BuUen, 1890. ( Introd.) 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



23 



Shakespeare's parody of repetition is familiar : Pyramus is 
thus made to apostrophize night and the wall : 

*' O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black ! 

night, which ever art when day is not ! 
O night, O night f alack, alack, alack, 

1 fear my Thisbe's promise is forgot ! — 
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, 

That stand'st between her father's ground and mine ! 
Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, 

Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne ! " * 

M. N. D,, v. I, 171-178. 



Schipper cites the following peculiar use of repetition as the 
only English example known to him. f The lines are taken 
from Furnivall's Early English Poe^ns and Lives of Saints^ and 
called by him a Rhyme-beginning Fragment. Furnivall dates 
them before the year 1300. Their peculiarity consists in mak- 
ing the last word of a preceding line serve as the first word of 
the line immediately following : J 

" Loue hauif me bro5t in lifir ^oit, 
poit ic ab to blinne ; 
Blinne to fench hit is for noit^ 
Noit is loue of sinne. 



*This passage satirizes repetition in the service of rhetoric, not in the 
service of metre. Cf. also L.L,L., iv. 2, 57-63- 
\ Englische Metrik, I. 317. 
\ The last three lines of the following stanza exemplify the same device : 

** Hath your God no rod, 
That ye tread so light ? 
Man on us as God, 
God a.^ man hath trod, — 
Trod as down with might." 

Swinburne, Christmas Antiphones. 



24 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

** Shine me hauip in care ibroif, 
Broit in mochil wnwmne: 
Winne to weld ic had \^oit ; 
jDoit is fat ic am I'nne. 

** In me is care, how i ssal fare. 
Fare ic wol and funde ; 
Funde [Furn : fare] ic wijjouten are, 
Ar i be bro3t to grunde." 

As rare as this structure is, Schipper has failed to observe 
that it occurs again even in Elizabethan times, and with an easy 
grace of movement that would hardly have been deemed pos- 
sible. The following lines are found in England's Helicon 
and are the contribution of John Wootton : * 

" Her eyes like shining lamps in midst of nighty 
Night dark and dead : 
Or as the stars that give the seamen lights 
Light for to lead 
Their wandering ships. 

** Amidst her cheeks the rose and lily strive, 
Lily snow-white : 
When their contend doth make their colour thrive^ 
Colour too bright 
For shepherd's eyes. 

** Her lips like scarlet of the finest dye, 
Scarlet blood-red : 
Teeth white as snow, which on the hills doth lie. 
Hills overspread 
By Winter's force. 

'* Her skin as soft as is the finest silk. 
Silk soft and fine : 
Of colour like unto the whitest milk^ 
Milk of the kine 
Of Daphne's herd. 

* See Minto, Characteristics of English Poets, p. 1S4. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 25 

** As swift of foot as is the pretty roe^ 
Roe swift of pace : 
When yelping hounds pursue her to and fro, 
Hounds fierce in chase 
To reave her life." 

The two structures are not, it is true, the same throughout, 
but the device used as well as the distinctive effect is the same 
in each poem. Many stanzas of the Braes of Yarrow (Percy 
Reliques^ Book VI.) employ practically the same device, not 
throughout any one stanza, but at regular intervals in the dif- 
ferent stanzas, thus producing effects more allied to the refrain. 

The French call this device *' la rime fraternisee." The 
Abb6 Massieu,* quoting deterrent examples of the metrical 
puerilities that characterized the tribe of versifiers under 
Charles VIII. and Louis XII., cites the following illustration 
of '' la rime fraternisee : " 

" Dieu Gard ma maitresse et x^gente, 
Gente de corps et de iTigon : 
Son coeur tient le mien dans sa tente, 
Tant et plus en mortel frisson." 

There are certain conceptions that can hardly be expressed 
without recourse to some form of repetition. This is especially 
true of the qualities of sameness, unchangeableness, continu- 
ousness.f In the following lines Tennyson has thus almost 
photographed the placidity of sleep : 

*' Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 
Father will come to thee soon; 

*See Studies in Early French Poetry. By Walter Besant. London and 
Cambridge, 1868. (Introduction.) 

f Could monotony be better expressed than in these lines ? — 
** So many hours must I tend my flock ; 
So many hours must I take my rest ; • 
So m^aiy hours must I contemplate." 

Henry VI., ii. 5, 31-33- 



26 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe i7i the nest^ 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleeps 

The Princess, iii. 

Compare also the following : 

" Dreams of the summer night ! 
Tell her, her lover keeps 
Watch ! while in slumbers light 
She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 
Sleeps ! " 
Longfellow, Serenade (in The Spanish Student, i. 3). 

*' Sleep, little babe, on my knee. 
Sleep, for the midnight is chill. 
And the moon has died out in the tree. 
And the great human world goeth ill. 
Sleep, for the wicked agree : 
Sleep, let them do as they will. 
Sleepr 

Mrs. Browning, Void in Law, 

** Ther thise goddes laye and slepe, 
Morpheus, arjsd Eclympasteyre, 
That was the god of slepes heyre. 
That slepe and did non other werk." 

Chaucer, The Book 0/ the Duchesse, 166-169. 

-' Besyde a folk men clepe Cimerie, 
Ther slepeth ay this god unmerie 
With his slepy thousand sones 
That alway for to slepe her wone is."* 

Chaucer, The Hous of Fame, Book I., 73-76. 

* Hood's The Death' Bed 2i\-\d Swinburne's The Garden of Proserpi7te slxq 
longer examples of similar effects produced largely by repetition. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



27. 



The dreamy, crooning repetition of the word " sleep *' in the 
foregoing citations seems to mimic the quiet that it would 
express. 

The repetition of " calm '' in the following lines not only 
expresses what could not otherwise be expressed, but lends a 
soothing effect even to ^' despair : '* 

** Calm is the morn without a sound, 
Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 
And only thro' the faded leaf 
The chestnut pattering to the ground : 

** Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
And on these dews that drench the furze. 
And all the silvery gossamers 
That twinl<le into green and gold : 

^* Cabti and still light on yon great plain 

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
To mingle with the bounding main : 

** Calm and deep peace in this w4de air. 
These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
And in my heart, if calm at all. 
If any cal??i, a cahn despair : 

** Cabn on the seas, and silver sleep, 

And waves that sway themselves in rest, 
And dead calm in that noble breast 
Which heaves but with the heaving deep." 

In Memoriam, xi. 

In Memoriam furnishes many illustrations of the more shy 
and subtle agencies of repetition. In the following stanzas 
from the Invocation, the futility of man's unaided efforts to 
solve the problems of existence and of moral responsibility is 
indicated by language which, in its enforced repetitions, hints, 
if it does not purposely share, an equal futility : 



-28 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

" Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
Tkou madest Life in man and brute ; 
Thou madest Death ; and lo, thy foot 
Is on the skull which thou hast made, 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thoti madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die ; » 

And thou hast 7nade him : thou art just. 

** Thou seemest human and divine, 

The highest, holiest manhood, thou : 
Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine." 

The same inability to understand our destiny, touched now 
with petulant sorrow, is again finely suggested by repetition : 

*' ** So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
A7i infant cryijtg in the night : 
An infant crying for the light : 
And with no language but a cry,'' 

lb., LIV. V. 

Coleridge employs it with unsurpassed skill to suggest the 
weird and uncanny : 

" Is the night chilly and dark? 

The night is chilly but not dark, 

• •>•••• 
« 

The night is chill, the cloud is gray : 



The night is chill; the forest bare ; 
Is it the wi7id that moaneth bleak ? 
There is not wind enoicgh in the air 
To move away the ringlet curl 
From the lovely lady's cheek — 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 29 

" There is not wind enough to twirl 
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
That dances as oft as dance it can, 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. 



*' Outside her kennel, the mastiff old 
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. 
The mastiff old did not awake, 
Yet she an angry moan did make ! 
And what can ail the mastiff bitch ? 
Never till now she uttered yell 
Beneath the eye of Christabel. 
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch : 
For what ca7i ail the 7nastiff bitch ? " * 

Christabel, Part I. 

Keats has utterly failed to catch the abrupt, terror-inspired 
movement that came so easily at Coleridge's beck : 

" O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms , 
Alone and palely loitering ? 
The sedge has withered from the lake. 
And no birds sing. 

*' O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
So haggard and so woe-begone ? 
The squirrel's granary is full. 
And the harvest's done." 

La Belle Dame sans Merci. 

Closely allied to the foregoing is the use of repetition to 
suggest the quaint and fantastic. ^^ Quaintness/' says Poe,f 
" within reasonable limits, is not only not to be regarded as an 

* Professor Corson has some suggestive remarks on these lines in his 
admirable Primer of English Verse, pp. ig-20. 

t The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (6 vols.). By Richard Henry Stod- 
dard. New York (1884). Vol. v., p. 209. 



30 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

affectation, but has its proper uses in aiding a fantastic effect." 
Poe illustrates by quoting from Miss Barrett's Song of a Tree- 
Spirit, * The italics are his own : 

"The divine impulsion cleaves 
In dim movements to the leaves 
Dropt afid lifted — dropt and lifted — 
In the sun-light greenly sifted — 
In the sun-light and the moon-light 
Gree7ily sifted through the trees. 
Ever wave the Ede7i trees , 
l7i the night-light and the noon-light. 
With a ruffling of green branches 
Shaded off to resonances 
Never stirred by rain or breeze." 

" The thoughts here belong," says Poe, '^ to a high order 
of poetry, but could not have been wrought into effective 
expression without the aid of those repetitions — those unusual 
phrases — those guaintnesses, in a word, which it has been too 
long the fashion to censure indiscriminately under the one gen- 
eral head of ^affectation.'" 

In his Literati of New York^\ Poe cites this stanza from 
Hoyt's Old : 

''By the wayside, on a mossy stone, 
Sat a hoary pilgrim sadly musing ; 
Oft I marked him sitting there alone, 
All the landscape like a page perusing ; 

Poor unknown, 
By the wayside, on a mossy stone.'* 

"The quaintness aimed at here," sa3^s Poe, "is, so far as 
a single stanza is concerned, to be defended as a legitimate 
effect, conferring high pleasure on a numerous and culti- 
vated class of minds. Mr. Hoyt, however, in his continuous 

* From A Drama of Exile (1844). f Stoddard. /. c, p. 470. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 31 

and uniform repetition of the first line in the last of each 
stanza of twenty-five, has by much exceeded the proper Hmits 
of the quaint and impinged upon the ludicrous." 

That Poe is here defending his own practice is evident. It 
is this that lends a special significance to his criticisms, for 
these are the only passages in which Poe alludes to the device 
of repetition apart from the refrain, a device which, in his 
hands at least, became an art. But as Poe's employment of 
repetition for the purpose of introducing quaint and fantastic 
effects will be separately treated elsewhere, I shall here 
merely call attention to the fact that such repetitions have 
been in use in English poetry for more than six centuries. 
This has been strangely and persistently overlooked by the 
critics, and conclusions have been arrived at in the discussions 
of Poe's style wholly at variance with the facts. The two 
following selections from The Owl and the Nightingale^ written 
before the year 1250, exhibit repetition used in precisely the 
manner commented upon as well as practised by Poe : 



"Bet )3U3te fe drem fat he were 
Of harpe and pipe, fan he nere, 
Bet )3U3te fat he were i-shote 
Of harpe and pipe fan of frote.' 



LI. 21-24. 



"And (3if) me schilde wif fe blete, 
Ne recche ich no5t of fine f rete ; 
Qf ich me holde in mine hegge, 
Ne recche ich never what fu segge."* 

LI. 57-60. 

* In each case the last two lines seem to gather up and consummate 
what was tentatively put forward in the preceding lines. 



REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 



CHAPTER II. 

Greek Influence : Repetition in the English Elegy. 

-O 'T^HE elegiac mood, in which the thought turns back so often 
^ upon itself, is best voiced by some form of repetition. 
It is seen in David's cry : ^* O my son Absalom ! my son, my 
son Absalom ! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, 
my son, my son ! " Traces of the elegiac repetend are plainly 
discernible in the Old English lyric, informed, as it is, with 
gloom and regret ; but, like the Old English epic, the Old 
English elegy was checked in its grqwth, so that there is no 
organic connection between the old elegy and the new. 

— - It is to the Alexandrian pastoral elegy, in which the repe- 
tend formed a characteristic feature of the movement and 
structure of the verse, that one must look for the real prototype 
of the great elegies of recent times. Tennyson's indebtedness 
to Bion, Moschus, and especially to Theocritus, has been 
touched upon by Mr. Stedman;* but the nature and frequent 
recurrence of the repetend, as employed by the " Sicilian 
tryad," may be seen in Mrs. Browning's translation of Bion's 
Lament for Adonis : 

'' I mourn for Ado7iis — Adonis is dead ! 
Fair Adonis is dead, and the Loves are lamenting. 
Sleep, Cypris, no more on thy purple-strewed bed ! 
Arise, wretch, stoled in black, — beat thy breast unrelenting, 
And shriek to the worlds, 'Fair Adonis is dead.' 

I mourn for Adonis — the Loves are lainenting. 
He lies on the hills, in his beauty and death, — 

* Victorian Poets, cap. vi. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. ^yTi 

The white tusk of a boar has transfixed his white thigh ; 

Cytherea grows mad at his thin gasping breath, 

While the black blood drips down on the pale ivory 

And his eye-balls lie quenched with the weight of his brows. . . . 

I mourn for Adonis — the Loves are lainenting. 
Deep, deep in the thigh, is Adonis's wound ; 
But a deeper, is Cypris'>s bosom presenting — 
The youth lieth dead while his dogs howl around, 
And the nymphs weep aloud from the mists of the hill, 
And the poor Aphrodite, with tresses unbound, 
All dishevelled, unsandalled, shrieks mournful and shrill 
Through the dusk of the groves. . . . 

Ah, ah, Cytherea ! the Loves are lamenting : 
She lost her fair spouse, and so lost her fair smile — 
When he lived she was fair by the whole world's consenting, 
Whose fairness is dead with him ! woe worth the while ! 
All the mountains above and the oaklands below 
Murmur, ah, ah Adonis ! . . . 

««•. •••• 

Ahy ah, Cytherea / Adonis is dead! 
Fair Adonis is dead — Echo answers, Adonis ! 
Who weeps not for Cypris, when bowing her head. 
She stares at the wound where it gapes and astonies? 
When, ah, ah ! — she saw how the blood ran away 
And empurpled the thigh ; and, with wild hands flung out. 
Said with sobs, 'Stay Adonis ! unhappy one stay ! ' . . . 

• •• •*••• 

Ah, ah, Cytherea ! Adonis is dead. 
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed ; 
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close ; 
Her tears, to the wind-flower, — his blood, to the rose. 

I mourn for Adonis — Adonis is dead. 
Weep no more in the woods, Cytherea, thy lover ! 
So, well ; make a place for his corse in thy bed. 
With the purples thou sleepest in, under and over. . . . 
3 



34 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Love him still, poor Adonis ! cast on him together 

The crowns and the flowers ! since he died from the place, 

Why let all die with him — let the blossoms go wither ; 

Rain myrtles and olive-buds down on his face : 

Rain the myrrh down, let all that is best fall a-pining, 

For the myrrh of his life from thy keeping is swept ! — 

Pale he lay, thine Adonis, in purples reclining, — 

The Loves raised their voices around him and wept. . . 



Cytherea herself, now, the Loves are lamenting. 

Each torch at the door Hymenasus blew out ; 

And the marriage-wreath dropping its leaves as repenting, 

No more ' Hymen, Hymen,' is chanted about, 

But the ai ai instead — * ai alas * is begun 

For Adonis, and then follows * ai Hymenseus ' ! 

The Graces are weeping for Cinyris' son. 

Sobbing low, each to each, * His fair eyes cannot see us * 1 — 

Their wail strikes more shrill than the sadder Dione's ; 

The Fates jnotirti aloud for Adonis, Adonis." . . . 



To Tennyson, says Mr. Stedman,* " may be adjudged the 
credit of being the first to catch the manner of the classical 
idyls and reproduce it in modern use and being. Before his 
time, Milton and Shelley were the only poets who measurably 
succeeded in this attempt, and neither of them repeated it after 
a single trial. Other reproductions of the Greek idyllic form 
have been by a kind of filtration through the Latin medium ; 
and often, by a third remove, after a redistillation of the 
French product.'' Of Matthew Arnold's great elegy, Thyrsis^V 
Mr. Stedman remarks : f *^ It is another, and one of the best, 
of the successful English imitations of Bion and Moschus ; 
among which Lycidas is the most famous, though some ques- 

* Victorian Poets, p. 232. 

f /^., pp. 98-99. William Watson, in his sonnet To Lord Tennyson, 
pays tribute to his '* Doric grace." 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 35 

J 
tion whether Swinburne, in his Ave atque Vale^ has not sur- 
passed them all. Before the appearance of the last-named 
elegy, I wrote of Thyrsis that it was noticeable for exhibiting 
the precise amount of aid which classicism can render to the 
modern poet. As a threnode, nothing comparable to it had 
then appeared since the Adonais of Shelley/' 

The expressions, *' Sicilian Muse '* and ** Doric lay,'* used by 
Milton in Lycidas^ would of themselves prove Sicilian influence. 
The use of the repetend in the opening lines is, moreover, the 
same : 

** Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more, 
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
And with forc'd fingers rude 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.* 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear 
Compels me to disturb your season due ; 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? " 

It is not unlikely that the reproduction of the Greek idyllic 
form even in Lycidas has been, partly at least, *'by a kind of 
filtration," not through a Latin but through an English 
medium. On the " Elegy written by Brysket (though gener- 
ally ascribed to Spenser f) on the death of Sir Philip Sidney," 
Guest J comments as follows : " It has very little poetical 
merit, but deserves attention, as having undoubtedly been in 
Milton's eye when he wrote his Lycidas. From it Milton bor- 
rowed his irregular rimes, and that strange mixture of Chris- 
tianity and heathenism, which shocked the feelings and roused 

* Mr. Swinburne considers these lines (the first five of Lycidas) the most 
musical ever written. 

f And printed in the Globe edition of Spenser, p. 563. 

X History of English Rhythms (edited by Skeat), London, 1882, pp. 
265-266. 



36 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

the indignation of Johnson. It may be questioned, if the 
peculiarity in the metre can fairly be considered a blemish. 
Like endings, recurring at uncertain distances, impart a wild- 
ness and an appearance of negligence to the verse, which suits 
well with the character of elegy." 

The elegy in question is entitled The Mourning Muse of 
Thestylis, and is itself a plain imitation of Sicilian models : 

*' Come forth, ye Nymphs ! come forth, forsake your watVy bowers, 
Forsake yonr mossy caves, and help me to lament ; 
Help me to tune my doleful notes to gurgling sound 
Of Liffie's tumbling streams, come let salt tears of ours, 
Mix with his waters fresh, O come, let one consent 
Joyn us to mourn with wailful plaints the deadly wound 
Which fatal clap hath made, decreed by higher powers 
The drery day, in which they have from us yrent 
The noblest plant that might from east to west be found. 
Mourn, mourn great Philip's fall ! mourn we his woeful end, 
Whom spiteful death hath pluckt untimely from the tree, 
Whiles yet his years in fiowre did promise worthy fruit."* 

Spenser has clearly caught the Sicilian strain in the follow- 
ing dedicatory stanza prefixed to Astrophel^ his elegy upon 
Sir Philip Sidney : 

"To you [Shepheards] alone I sing this mournfull verse, 
The mournfulst verse that ever man heard tell : 
To you, whose softened hearts it may empierse 
With dolours dart for death of Astrophel. 
To you I sing and to none other wight, 
For well I wot my rymes bene rudely dight." 

* It is nearer the close of the poem that the resemblance in conception to 
Lycidas is most clearly shown, a resemblance too close to be accidental. Of 
course Milton has not plagiarized from, but rather honored, Brysket. Cf, 
also Ogle's interesting article on the Origin of Milton s Lycidas (Classical 
Journal, v. 29, p. 356/., 1824). 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 37 

Compare also the opening stanza of Adonais : 

^^ I weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 
Oh, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 
And teach them thine own sorrow ; say : With me 
Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity ! " * 

* Professor Jebb, Primer of Greek Literature {^. 142), says : "Bion, a native 
of Ionia, was another pastoral poet, best known to us by his Lament for 
Adonis^ which Shelley has used in his Adonais^ and which Mrs. Browning 
has translated." The Adonais contains also many unmistakable allusions 
to the Lament for Bion^ which forms the third of the nine Idyls written by 
Moschus. Dr. Furnivall suggests that "Adonais is Shelley's variant of 
Adonias, the women's yearly mourning for Adonis." Cf, the Adoniazusce 
of Theocritus. 



33 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 



CHAPTER III. 

Finnish Influence : Repetition in '' Hiawatha " and 
Other Finnish Imitations. 

1\|0 sketch of the influence of repetition in English verse 
^ ^ would be complete without some allusion to another 
foreign source, the Finnish epic, Kalevala^ as imitated chiefly 
in Longfellow's Hiawatha^ the latter appearing in 1855. The 
Kalevala employs both repetition and alliteration. Longfellow 
dispensed with alliteration, but preserved the repetitions and 
unrimed trochaics of the original. 

In the Finnish collection of ballads, called the Kanteletar^ 
there is, in addition to repetition and alliteration, a prevailing 
note of tender melancholy, which also seems reflected at times 
in Hiawatha : * 

"Then his face with black he painted, 
With his robe his head he covered. 
In his wigwam sat lamenting, 
Seven long weeks he sat lamenting, 
Uttering still this moan of sorrow : — 
* He is dead, the sweet musician ! 
He the sweetest of all singers ! 
He has gone from us forever, 
He has moved a little nearer 
To the Master of all music, 
To the Master of all singing ! 
O my brother, Chibiabos ! ' 

And the melancholy fir-trees 
Waved their dark green fans above him, 

* Repetition forms so constituent a part of the structure of these Finnish 
imitations that I have deemed the use of italics unnecessary. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 39 

Waved their purple cones above him, 
Sighing with him to console him, 
Mingling with his lamentation 
Their complaining, their lamenting." 

Canto XV. 

To what extent Longfellow was indebted to the Finns may 
be seen from the following lines taken from William Howitt's 
translation of the Kalevala (1852), He, too, makes no attempt 
to preserve alliteration, and, like Longfellow, makes almost no 
use of enjambement : 

** And there lives not such a hero, 
Not a man so firm of purpose. 
Not a man, much less a woman, 
By his tears who is unmoved. 
Weep the young and weep the aged ; 
Weep the middle-aged not less so ; 
Weep the men who are unmarried, 
Weep the married men as fully ; 
Weep the bachelors and maidens ; 
Weeps the girl, half-child, half-woman. 
When is heard that moving sound. 

So his tears drop in the waters. 
Tears of ancient Wainamoinen ; 
To the blue sea they flow onward. 
Onward from the wild strand flowing ; 
Deep beneath the crystal waters, 
Spreading o'er the sandy bottom. 
Here they wondrously are changM — 
Changed into precious jewels, 
To adorn fair queenly bosoms. 
And to gladden loftiest minds." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes would explain the " fatal facility *' of 
Hiawatha on physiological grounds : " The recital of each line 
uses up the air of one natural expiration, so that we read, as 
we naturally do, eighteen or twenty lines in a minute without 
disturbing the normal system of breathing, which is also 



40 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

eighteen or twenty breaths to the minute." This explanation, 
however, would apply equally to all octosyllabic verse, whether 
employing repetition or not. A better explanation would be 
that it is easier to repeat words and constructions than to 
en:iploy new ones. Compare the opening lines : 

** Should you ask me, whence these stories ? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest, 
With the dew and damp of meadows, 
With the curling smoke of wigwams. 
With the rushing of great rivers, 
With their frequent repetitions, 
And their wild reverberations, 
As of thunder in the mountains ? 

I should answer, I should tell you," etc. 

Professor Robertson well says * that if the construction of 
Evangeline was a courageous effort, ^^ the experiment of Hia- 
watha was actually daring." Yet its success was established 
from the very outset. The belligerent critics, however, felt 
sure that there must have been plagiarism from some source, 
they knew not where. Longfellow himself at no time made 
any secret as to the source of his verse. It remained, how- 
ever, for his German friend and former companion, Ferdinand 
Freiligrath, to settle the matter among the critics. Vv^riting to 
Longfellow from London, December 7, 1855, Freiligrath says: f 
" Of course William Howitt is right ; and your trochaic metre 
is taken from the Finns, not from the Spaniards. . . . The 
characteristic feature, which shows that you have fetched the 
metre from the Finns, is the parallelism adopted so skilfully 
and so gracefully in Hiawatha, I wonder that just this deci- 
sive circumstance is overlooked by all the combatants. It 
settles the question at once." 

* Life of Longfellow* London, 1887. p. 140. 

f See Life of Henry Wadsworih Longfellow, Edited by Samuel Long- 
fellow. (3 vols.) Boston, 1893. Vol. ii.^ p. 298. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 



41 



And Longfellow quietly notes * in his Journal^ January i r, 
1856 : ** A letter from Freiligrath, and a short article f by him 
on the metre of Hiawatha^ which is making some discussion in 
the English papers. He puts the matter right at once. But 
he does not seem aware that \h^ parallelism^ or repetition, is as 
much the characteristic of Indian as of Finnish song." 

Goethe had long before essayed a Finnish imitation. His 
Finnisches Lied (1810) preserves throughout its three stanzas 
the parallelism of clauses, but makes no attempt at repetition 
proper or alliteration : 

** Kam' der liebe Wohlbekannte, 
Vollig so wie er geschieden, 
Kuss erklang' an seinen Lippen, 
Hatt' auch Wolfsblut sie gerotet ; 
Ihm den Handschlag gab* ich, waren 
Seine Fingerspitzen Schlangen.** 

Goethe was followed by Platen, who in his mastery of the 
various styles of foreign verse and perhaps in his sense of har- 
mony was hardly inferior to Goethe himself. The following 
lines taken from the close of his Wdindmoinens Harfe (1833), 
though made from a Swedish translation of the Finnish, are 
full of melody : 

** Und dem Wainamoinen selbst 
Flossen Thranen aus den Augen, 
Dicker noch als Heidelbeeren, 
Grosser noch als Schnepfeneier, 
Nieder auf den breiten Busen, 
Von dem Busen auf die Kniee, 
Von den Knieen auf die Fiisse : 
So durchnassten Wasserperlen 
Fiinf von seinen Wollenmanteln, 
Acht von seinen Zwillichrocken." 

^ Life, edited by S. Longfellow, vol. ii., p. 303. 

f The article alluded to is found in the Athencetim (London), No. 1470, 
December 29, 1855. It is but a coluntin in length, and is well summed up in 
Freiligrath's letter to Longfellow. 



42 



REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 



As Longfellow continued and consummated the work of 
transmission begun by Goethe and Platen, so Charles Baude- 
laire continued the work of Longfellow. In his Le Calumet de 
Paix^ i77iite de Lo7igfellow^ (1857), Baudelaire has employed 
rime and division into stanzas, but he has preserved the tone 
oi Hiawatha and infused into his verse a rich music surpassing 
that of his original. No stanza is superior to the fourth : 

" Et lentement montait la divine fumee 
Dans I'air doux du matin, onduleuse, embaumee. 
Et d'abord ce ne fut qu'un sillon tenebreux ; 
Puis la vapeurse fit plus bleue et plus epaisse, 
Puis blanchit ; et montant, et grossissant sans cesse, 
Elle alia se briser au dur plafond des cieux." 

Swinburne's Finnish venture. The Bloody Son (1866), is not 
a happy one. Like Tennyson, Swinburne has an ear too deli- 
cately attuned to the finer harmonies of English verse to give 
him mastery over the ruder keys of dialect : 

** 'O where have ye been the morn sae late, 

My merry son, come tell me hither ? 
O where have ye been the morn sae late ? 

And I wot I hae but anither.' 
• By the water-gate, by the water-gate, 

O dear mither.* 

** * And whatten kin' o* wark had ye there to make, 

My merry son, come tell me hither ? 
And whatten kin' o' wark had ye there to make ? 

And I wot I hae but anither.* 
' I watered my steeds with water frae the lake, 

O dear mither.'" 

It cannot be said that these Finnish imitations have had 
much influence on later poetry. The discussions evoked by 
Hiawatha called public attention for a while to the latent 

* Les Fleurs du Mai, Ixxxv., C. Levy, editeur. Paris, 1892. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



43 



possibilities of parallelism and repetition, but these soon died 
down, leaving no appreciable effects in subsequent verse. As 
Sv/inburne's Ave atque Vale (1867) in memory of Charles 
Baudelaire marks the close of the great English elegies pro- 
duced under the influence of the Sicilian pastoral poets, so 
Longfellow's Hiawatha {1855) may be said to mark both 
beginning and close of successful imitation in English verse of 
Finnish models. 

The foregoing examples of repetition and parallelism have 
been given chiefly by way of survey and illustration ; but I shall 
now confine the study to the works of two modern poets, who 
in the art and consistency with which they have employed 
these devices, as well as in the brilliancy of the effects thus 
wrought, have no peers in the history of English literature. I 
refer to Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Charles Swinburne. 



44 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 



CHAPTER IV. 

Repetition in the Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. 

pOE'S genius has never received the recognition in America 
-*- that it has received abroad. His popularity in France, 
exceeding that of any other American poet, is due largely, of 
course, to the sympathetic criticism and loyalty of Charles 
Baudelaire ; but the eager reception accorded by the French 
to the weird romances of Hoffmann * had already paved the 
way for Baudelaire*s translations of Poe. Gautier, the friend 
and survivor of Baudelaire, declared Poe's genius too rare 
and ethereal to be understood by his Philistine countrymen. 
" He did not adore the almighty dollar exclusively ; he loved 
poetry for its own sake, and preferred beauty to utility : 
heresie dnormeT f 

It is not surprising that Swinburne is found among Poe's 
foreign admirers. Dividing American poets into two classes, 
"corn-crakes" and "mocking-birds*' — the one characterized 
by harsh, the other by borrowed, notes — Swinburne affirms 
that the melody and originality of Poe's verse save him from 
being included in either division. J 

Joseph Skipsey thinks that Poe was "the finest and most 
brilliant poetic genius that America has yet produced," that " in 
his very earliest literary efforts he had surpassed every other 
writer that America had produced," and that " in the specialty 

* As to Hoffmann's popularity in France, see Scherer, History of German 
Literature^ chap. xiii. 

f Notice to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mai (1868). 
X Under the Microscope { 1872). 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 45 

of melody, he excels Collins, and indeed all others except some 
two or three of the very greatest poets in the English tongue." "^ 

Edmund Gosse, the last to voice English sentiment in re- 
gard to Poe, writes as follows to The Critic (New York), July 
29, 1893 : 

*'The result of your ballot for 'The Best Ten American 
Books/ declared in your issue for June 3, 1893, contains one 
feature of great and grave public interest. It cannot^ I think, 
be too strongly impressed on the notice of Americans of taste. 
It is a feature of omission. You give (on p. 357) a list of 
authors who received ' in all twenty votes or more.' These 
authors are thirty in number, and one of them received nearly 
seven hundred votes. But among these thirty does not occur 
the name of the most perfect, the most original, the most 
exquisite of the American poets. The name of Edgar Allan 
Poe does not occur. 

" The omission is extraordinary and sinister. If I were an 
American, I should be inclined to call it disastrous. While 
every year sheds more lustre on the genius of Poe among the 
most weighty critical authorities of England, of France, of Ger- 
many, of Italy, in his own country prejudice is still so rampant 
that he fails to secure a paltry twenty votes, when Wallace (who 
on earth is, or was, Wallace ?) secures two hundred and fifty- 
two, Mrs. Jackson fifty-seven, and Mitchell (who is, or was, 
Mitchell ?) forty-two. You must look to your own house, but 
it makes one wonder what is the standard of American style." 

The parenthetic queries do honor to Mr. Gosse's frankness, 
though they do not commend him as preeminently qualified to 
pass judgment on recent phases of American literature. It is 
to be regretted that foreign critics, while paying deserved trib- 
ute to Poe, should see fit, by way of intended antithesis, to 

* The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by Joseph Skipsey. 
London, 1884. {Prefatory notice,^ 

See also Introduction ^ by Ernest Rhys, to Tales and Essays of Edgar 
Poe, London, 1889. 



46 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

indulge in belittling comments upon American literature as a 
whole. Does not the real antithesis lie in the contrast between 
foreign appreciation of Poe and foreign ignorance of American 
literature in general ? However this may be, it is certain that 
Poe's fame has suffered from the indiscriminate eulogy of 
friends almost as much as from the coarse slander of enemies. 

The limited amount of verse left by Poe makes the study of 
repetition as employed by him comparatively easy. He could 
produce, however, without resort to his favorite devices, poetry 
of a type that proves his genius to have been independent of 
any one peculiarity of style. Mr. Woodberry * speaks oilsrafel 
as " the first pure song of the poet, the notes most liquid and 
clear and soaring of all he ever sang.'* " If I had any claim," 
says Mr. Stedman,f " to make up a ' Parnassus,' not perhaps of 
the most famous English lyrics, but of those which appeal 
strongly to my own poetic sense, and could select but one of 
Poe's, I confess that I should choose Israfel, for pure music, 
for exaltation, and for its original, satisfying quality of rhythmic 
art." But in Israfel there is hardly a suggestion of Poe's 
characteristic use of repetition. Nor can the use of repetition 
in To One in Paradise^ To Helena The Conqueror Worm, or The 
Haunted Palace be considered at all characteristic. 

The poems in which repetition enters as a controlling ele- 
ment of the style and versification are The Raven, Le7iore, The 
Bells, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, To Helen,\ The City in the Sea, 
The Sleeper, Dream- Land, Eulalie, and For Annie, 

It should be premised that the repetition of a word or words 
constituting a refrain cannot justly be said to individualize 
Poe's style or the style of any other poet. Such repetitions 
have, indeed, been used by many poets far more extensively 

'^ Edgar Allan Poe (American Men of Letters Series). Boston, 1885. 
(p. 60.) 

\ Poets of America. Boston, i8go. (p. 248.) 

\ Poe unfortunately has two poems entitled To Helen, I allude here to 
the one written in blank verse, beginning, " I saw thee once." 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 47 

than Poe has used them. It is not a simple but a compound 
repetend that Poe employs. He repeats not a mere word but 
a group of words, usually a whole clause. The repetition may 
be (i) complete, or (2) partial. 

(i) The following selections exemplify the use of the un- 
changed repetend ; />., complete repetition : 

*' I saw thee once — once only — years ago : 
I must not say how many — but not many. 
It was a July midnight ; and from out 
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven. 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light. 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand 
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe — 
Fell on the upturn d faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — 
Fell 071 the upturn d faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted 
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. 
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 
I saw thee half reclining ; while the moon 
Fell on the upturn d faces of the roses, 
And on thine own, upturn'd — alas, in sorrow !" 

To Helen. 

"And I lie so composedly, 
Now, in my bed 
(Knowing her love). 
That you fancy me dead — 
And I rest so contentedly, 
Now, m rny bed 
"(With her love at my breast), 
That you fancy me dead.'' 

For Annie. 



48 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

The repetends here employed—" Fell on the upturned faces 
of these roses," " Now in my bed," " That you fancy me dead" 
— are not frequent with Poe. His usual manner is, while pre- 
serving the last word of each repeated line, to vary one or 
more of the preceding words. 

(2) Partial repetition is, thus, the more frequent in Poe's 
verse. When the repetend is a complete line, the changes are 
internal, the last word being usually left intact. This produces 
v/hat is called perfect rime^ w^hich, says Gummere,* ** is now 
entirely foreign to English verse." But it has not been observed 
that Poe skilfully disguises the effect of his perfect rimes by 
lessening the emphasis of the repeated rime-word. This he 
does by throwing a sudden and superior emphasis on the newly 
introduced word or words that serve to differentiate the two 
forms of the repetend. A single example will make this clear. 
The following lines, in which I italicize the words that by their 
superior emphasis call attention away from the perfect rimes, 
constitute the first stanza of Ulalume: 

** The skies they were ashen and sober ; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — 

The leaves they were withering and sere ; f 
It was night in tlie lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year ; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid-region of Weir, — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 

'^^ Handbook of Poetics, Boston, 1885. (p. 153.) 

f Note how the distribution of emphasis in this and similar couplets 
containing perfect rime distinguishes them from other couplets containing 
perfect rime but unrelieved : 

'* * Alias ! than am I overcome ! 
For that is doon is not to come ! 
I have more sorowe than Tantale.' 

And whan I herde him telle this tale/' etc. 

Chaucer, Book of the Duchesse, 707-710. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 49 

Here the two forms of the first repetend are : 

" The leaves they were crisped and sere — 
The leaves they were withering and sere ; ** * 

but the perfect rime (" sere," ^' sere ") is not felt to be a blem- 
ish, because the second "sere" receives much less emphasis 
than the first. Attention is centred more upon " withering," 
which, as a substitute for "^ crisped," not only assumes the most 
prominent place in the line, but serves to differentiate the two 
forms of the repetend. 

The two forms of the second repetend are : 

*' It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber ; ** 
of the third : 

" In the misty mid-region of Weir, — 



In \h^ ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," 

in which ^^ woodland'' receives the strongest emphasis as the 
poet's chosen substitute for " mid-region." 
Other examples of partial repetition are : 

" But our love it was stronger by far than the love 
Of those who were older than we, — 
Of many far wiser than we ; 



And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side 
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, 

In the sepulchre there by the sea, 

In her tomb by the sounding sea." 

Annabel Lee. 

* Cf. the examples of ** synonymous parallelism " given by Lowth in his 
Lectures on Hebrew Poetry. 

4 



50 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

*' So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating 
* *Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, — 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door. 

This it is, and nothing more.*" 

The Raven. 

" Come, let the burial rite be read, — the funeral song be sung ! — 
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young, — 
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young." 

Lenore, 

*' In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire." 

T/ie Bells. 

"I dwelt alone 
In a world of moan, 
And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride, — 
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride." 

Eulalie. 

"She tenderly kissed me, 

She fondly caressed, 
And then I fell gently 

To sleep on her breast, — 
Deeply to sleep 

From the heaven of her breast. 

"When the light was extinguished 

She covered me warm, 
And she prayed to the angels 

To keep me from harm, — 
To the queen of the angels 

To shield me from harm." 



For Annie. 



Far in the forest, dim and old. 

For her may some tall vault unfold,- 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 51 

Some vault that oft hath flung its black 
And winged panels fluttering back, 
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls 
Of her grand family funerals, — 
Some sepulchre, remote, alone, 
Against whose portal she hath thrown. 
In childhood, many an idle stone, — 
Some tomb from out whose sounding door 
She ne'er shall force an echo more." 

The Sleeper, 

" For no ripples curl, alas ! 
Along that wilderness of glass ; 
No swellings tell that winds may be 
Upon some far-off happier sea ; 
No heavings hint that winds have been 
On scenes less hideously serene." 

The City in the Sea. 

For Annie and The City in the Sea exemplify alternate repeti- 
tion, while in Ulalurne the repetends alternate at the close of 
the stanza, but elsewhere follow one another immediately. 

A more interesting question relates to the source or sources 
of the repetend as used by Poe. The attempt to correlate his 
verse with preceding or contemporary verse is not to be con- 
strued as an attempt to understate his genius or his originality. 
Time has set its seal on these, and Poe has gone down to pos- 
terity with Hoffmann, Baudelaire, Coleridge, and Hawthorne. 
It is rather an attempt to estimate Poe's work at its true value 
by viewing it in the light of historical connection and literary 
precedent. To compare Poe with Longfellow, as is so often 
done, is to compare two men who had almost nothing in com- 
mon, whose views of the poetic art were almost antipodal, and 
whose works, valuable and enduring as both are, will not bear 
comparison, being wholly unamenable to the same law or laws. 

As a poet, Poe must be regarded as a writer of ballads, and 
of that class of ballads of which the mysterious forms the con- 



52 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

trolling and essential element. Goethe * has emphasized the 
importance of the note of mystery in the ballad, and Professor 
Child, f our highest American authority, speaks of the drop- 
ping or obscuring of marvellous incidents in the ballad as 
a mark of degeneracy. The Raven belongs with Goethe's 
Erlkonig^ Burger's Lenore\ and Coleridge's Ancie72t Mariiier 
and CJu'istabeL Viewed in this light, viewed as a continuation 
of the ballad revival signalized by the appearance of the 
Ancient Martne?^ the spirit and structural peculiarities of Poe*s 
most famous poems are at once understood. " In reading that 
man's poetry," says Poe § of Coleridge, **I tremble like one 
who stands upon a volcano, conscious, from, the very darkness 
bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that are wel- 
tering below." And again, |] '^ Of Coleridge I cannot speak 
but with reverence. His towering intellect ! his gigantic 
power ! '' 

A study of the English, French, or German ballad shows that 
Poe has used materials already at hand. He has subjected the 
structural peculiarities of the ballad to the demands of rigid art, 
has added novel combinations here and there, but the effect is 
and was meant to be that of the ballad. Does not Poe's use 
of the term " quaintness " (pp. 29-30) show that in the repetend 
he saw a means of reproducing the effects of the older verse } 
Other poets have recognized this function of repetition. 

Among Tennyson's Juvenilia is found the Ballad of Oriana, 
The following stanza shows that Tennyson well knew the 

* See the brief but admirable discussion of the spirit and structure of the 
German ballad, as exemplified chiefly in the ballads of Goethe and Burger, 
that Echtermeyer has prefixed to his AuswahJ deutscher Gedichte^ Halle, 
1885. It forms a suggestive introduction to the subject of -repetition in 
ballad verse. 

f Ballads^ 2d ed., vol. i., p. 48. 

X It is well known that Burger himself derived his inspiration from 
the older English ballads. See Scherer, /. r,, chap. xi. 

g Stoddard, /. c, I. 50-51. 

||/^., VI. 570. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 



SZ 



value of repetition as a means of imitating the *^ stretched metre 
of an antique song f' 

"The bitter arrow went aside, 

Oriana : 
The false, false arrow went aside, 

Oriana : 
The damned arrow glanced aside. 
And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride, 

Oriana ! 
Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride, 

Oriana ! " 

In his ballad entitled The Revenge^ a Ballad of the Fleets 
written in 1880, occur these lines : 

" Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons 

came. 
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and 

flame ; 
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and 

her shame." 

Tennyson has in these two selections borrowed from the 
structure of the older ballad the two forms of repetition em- 
ployed by Poe, partial and complete. 

The following selections from Coleridge exhibit the same 
devices : 

*' And I had done an hellish thing, 
And it would work 'em woe : 
For all averred, I had killed the bird 
That made the breeze to blow. 
Ah, wretch ! said they, the bird to slay, 
That made the breeze to blow. 

"Nor dim nor red, like God's own head. 
The glorious Sun uprist : 
Then all averred, I had killed the bird 



54 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

That brought the fog and mist. 

'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay. 

That bring the fog and mist." 

Ancient Mariner, Part the Second. 

** A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
And I blessed them unaware ! 
Sure my kind saint took pity on me. 
And I blessed them unaware." 

lb.. Part the Fourth. 

The following familiar stanzas composing Kingsley*s The 
Sands of Dee, exemplify the same peculiarities of structure, 
peculiarities that may be found in almost all English ballads 
dealing with similar or related themes ; 

" * O Mary, go and call the cattle hom.e, 
And call the cattle home. 
And call the cattle home, 
Across the sands o* Dee ; ' 
The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, 
And all alone went she. 

*' The creeping tide came up along the sand. 
And o'er and o'er the sand, 
And round and round the sand. 
As far as eye could see ; 
The blinding mist came down and hid the land — 
And never home came she. 

*' ' Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair — 
A tress o* golden hair, 
O' drowned maiden's hair, 
Above the nets at sea ? 
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair, 
Among the stokes on Dee.' 

" They rowed her in across the rolling foam. 
The cruel, crawling foam, 
The cruel, hungry foam. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 55 

To her grave beside the sea ; 
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, 
Across the sands o' Dee." 



Without making further quotations, it seems evident that 
all attempts to explain Poe's use of the repetend as due to the 
influence of any one poet are entirely futile. I cannot think, 
therefore, that Mr. Stedman has spoken with his usual insight 
and accuracy when he says that Poe derived his use of the 
repetend from Mrs. Browning.* There are suggestions of 
Poe's style here and there in Mrs. Browning's Romaunt of the 
Page (1839), but being a volume of ballads, the most import- 
ant giving its name to the collection, a resemblance to Poe was 
to be expected. 

Mr. Skipsey's remarks, properly interpreted, point the same 
way. ^* It has been supposed," he says, ^^ that Poe caught the 
idea of utilizing for musical effects — as he has done in Lenore^ 
Eulalie^ and other pieces — the refrain derived from the repeti- 
tion of some emphatically significant word or line of the poem, 
from the practice of Mangan, in whose Titries of the Barmecides 
and Dark Rosaleen^ such refrains are made to play a similar 
effective part. ... I speak of Mangan on the merit of 
some lyrics solely, which are to be found in two or three Irish 
ballad books published by Duffy of Dublin.'* 

Poe and Mangan died the same year, 1849. There was no 
American edition of Mangan's poems until 1859, and not even 
a London edition until after 1849. -^^^ ^^y t^^ve heard of 
Mangan, though I do not think it likely, but that he ever read 
a line of Mangan's poems seems highly improbable. Mr. 
Skipsey's allusion, however, to a ballad book is significant. 

The charge made by a recent anonymous editor of Poe's 
poems, that their author "boldly plagiarized not only the gen- 
eral idea of The Raven, but even many of the peculiarities of 
rhythm and rhyme, from Albert Pike's poem Isidore,'' hardly 

* Poets of America f p. 245. 



56 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

merits attention. The repetend is used in The Raven precisely 
as it is used in the poems that Poe wrote many years before the 
appearance of Pike's Isidore, 

The conflicting opinions held especially in this country in re- 
gard to Poe's genius and to the originality and permanence of 
his work are due, I am convinced, almost entirely to the failure 
to judge his work by the canons of criticism that alone are appli- 
cable. If put upon the same plane with Longfellow and Ten- 
nyson, Poe is insignificant beside them. His range is narrower 
than theirs, his voice thinner. But in the realm of the older 
ballad, in complete mastery of the sensuous effects that lurk in 
color, form, and sound, heightened by brooding and indefinable 
gloom^ Poe takes easy and secure precedence. Room for him 
here must be made beside Burger, Goethe, and Coleridge. It 
is only in such a comparative estimate that Poe's genius will 
stand adequately outlim.ned. " The feelings to which he ap- 
peals,*' says Minto,* " are simple but universal, and he appeals 
to them with a force that has never been surpassed.'* 

* Encyclopczdia Britannica^ xix. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE, 



57 



CHAPTER V. 

Repetition in the Poems of Algernon Charles 

Swinburne. 

THE link between Poe and Swinburne is found in the lyric 
genius of Charles Baudelaire, with whose name the name 
of Poe is in France inseparably associated. No closer or more 
interesting literary affinity has ever existed than that between 
these two gifted but erratic men, neither of whom ever saw 
the other. Baudelaire adopted all of Poe's critical dicta and 
defended them to the last with a loyalty that would brook not 
the slightest disagreement ; he translated Poe's works into 
French " with an identification of style and thought so exact/' 
says Gautier, *^ that they seem original works rather than 
translations ; " he lived to see Poe's fame placed upon a far 
higher pedestal in France than in America ; and, when nearing 
his own end, he made a solemn resolve ^^ to pray every morn- 
ing to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice, to 
my father, to Mariette, and to Poe." * 

Thus a lineal descent of literary influence may be traced 
from Poe through Baudelaire to Swinburne, for it is to Baude- 
laire that Swinburne owes his earliest and strongest literary 
inspiration.! 

* See Esme Stuart, Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Poe : a Litera7'y 
Affinity. (Nineteenth Century^ July? i^QSO 

f Poe's Raven and Other Poems, established edition, appeared in 1845 ; 
Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mai, in 1857 \ Swinburne's Poe?ns and Ballads, 
in 1866. Baudelaire never saw Poe, and Swinburne never saw Baudelaire. 
There is no reason to believe that Poe had even heard of Baudelaire. 



58 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Of Swinburne's command of rhythm Mr. R. H. Stoddard thus 
speaks : * ^* Another quality to be noted in Swinburne, and one 
which allies him to the masters, is his sense of rhythm, — the 
music which is the inspiration and creation of metrical thought, 
and in which it lives, moves, and has its being. We find it in 
the great works of Shakespeare, and in his songs ; in the early 
poems of Milton, — the songs in Comics^ and passages in Para- 
dise Lost J and occasionally in Beaumont and Fletcher. We 
do not find it in Dryden and Pope, or, to come to our own 
time, in Scott or Byron. They knew nothing of the unheard 
melodies of which Keats tells us, but played, with their pipes 
or their trumpets, the old tunes which had been handed down 
to them, and from which such life as they may once have had 
had long since departed. 

" It was otherwise with Swinburne, whose sense of music 
was profound, and who had, besides, an ear of his own which 
taught him, that, much as the masters had accomplished, they 
had not discovered all the secrets of English verse, particularly 
the great secret which underlies all great poetry, — the compul- 
sion of discords into harmonies. The combinations of sound 
which run so strangely through Swinburne's poetry, and which 
cannot but end, one would think, in the harshest discords, 
become, in his hands, rivers of sonorous music, which rush and 
roar along their several ways until they reach the sea, and are 
swallowed up in its long, tumultuous, endless harmony. 

"When the history of English verse in the nineteenth 
century comes to be written, Swinburne will certainly figure in 
one chapter, and as prominently as any of his contemporaries 
or predecessors." 

Mr. Stedman f is not less outspoken : " Before the advent of 
Swinburne we did not realize the full scope of English verse. 
In his hands it is like the violin of Paganini. The range of 

* Introduction to Selections from the Poetical Works of A, C, Swinburne, 
New York, 1884. 

f Victorian Poets, Boston, 1885. (pp. 380-381.) 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



59 



his fantasias, roulades, arias, new effects of measure and sound, 
is incomparable with anything hitherto known. The first 
emotion of one who studies even his immature work is that of 
wonder at the freedom and richness of his diction, the susurrus 
of his rhythm, his unconscious alliterations, the endless change 
of his syllabic harmonies, — resulting in the alternate softness 
and strength, height and fall, riotous or chastened music, of 
his affluent verse. How does he produce it? Who taught 
him all the hidden springs of melody ? He was a born tamer 
of words." 

That Swinburne owes his most characteristic and brilliant 
formal effects to the play and interplay of repetition, can, I 
think, be easily shown. After memorizing large portions of 
his lyric poetry, I have been surprised to see how the same 
devices of repetition, the same varieties of homophony, the 
same tricks of style, keep again and again recurring. It is due 
partly to this that his lines remain so easily and so ineffaceably 
in the memory. 

(i) Swinburne is not fond of initial repetition or of alternate 
parallelism, but the following stanza from Laus Veneris illus- 
trates one of his characteristic devices of repetition : * 

** Ah, with blind lips I felt for you, and found 
About my neck your hands and hair enwound, 
The hands that stifle a7id the hair that stings ^ 
I felt them fasten sharply without sound." 

Swinburne has here taken two accented f words, " hands " 
and *' hair," and repeated them further on in the stanza, add- 
ing to each a relative clause. The third line has thus been 
already prepared for before it is reached. It consists, more- 
over, of two clauses, not only parallel in construction, both 

* The citations made are in no case even approximately exhaustive. 

f I have in many cases cited repeated words that are not accented. The 
difference in effect is one of degree, not of kind. So, for assonance instead 
of complete repetition. 



6o REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

being relative clauses of three words, but uniform in succession 
of consonants,— " ^ands," '* ^/ifle : " " /^air," " ^/ings." The 
devices of parallelism will, however, be treated in their proper 
place. Attention is here called to the frequency with which 
Swinburne repeats two preceding and accented words with the 
addition to each of a relative clause. Other examples are : 

" I have put my days and dreams out of mind, 
Days that are over, dreams that are done." 

Triumph of Time. 

" There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire, 
Face to face with its own desire; 
A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes." 

lb, 

" Delight, the rootless flower, 
And love, the bloomless bower ; 
Delight that lives an hour, 

And love that lives a day." 

Before Dawn, 

*vSuch word alone were fit for only thee, 
\i his and thine have met 
Where spirits rise and set, 
His whom we see not, thi7ie whom scarce we see." 

A Birth- Song. 

" Sweet is each in season, good the gift it brings, 
Sweet as change of night and day w^ith altering wings, 
Night that lulls world-weary day, day that comforts night, 
Night that fills our eyes with sleep, day that fills with light." ^' 

Chorus in Erechtheits, 

* *' * The day to night,'' she made her moan, 
' The day to night, the night to morn, 
And day and flight I am left alone 
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.' *' 

Tennyson, Mariana in the South, 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 6 1 

In the two following examples Swinburne repeats the two 
words in the inverse order : 

'* Soft hands and lips that smite ; 
Lips that no love can tire, 
With hands that sting like fire." 

Before Dawn, 

*' The loves and hours of the life of a man, 

They are swift and sad, being born of the sea; 
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span. 

Born with a man's breath, mortal as he ; 
Loves that are lost ere they' come to birth." 

Triu7nph of Time. 

When the two words are repeated without the addition of 
a relative clause, the inverse order is far the more common : '^ 



' Till \\{^ forget and death remember, 
Till thou remember and I forget.'' 



** Could I forget or thou remember, 
Couldst thou remember and \ forget ^ 



Itylus. 



lb. 



" Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day ; 

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May." 

Hymn to Proserpine, 

* This is not unlike Shakespeare's inverse method : 
" They are apt enough to dislocate and tear 
Thy flesh and bones " {King Lear, iv. 2, 65-66), 
where '* Thy bones and flesh" would preserve the order implied in *' dis- 
locate and tear." See Corson, Introduction to Shakespeare, Boston, i88g. 
(pp. 374-377.) 

Genung, Practical Rhetoric (p. 163), considers the following an example 
of the inverse order used " to disguise the iteration : " ** Make the heart of 
this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they 
see with their eyes^ and hear with their ears, and understand with their 
heart.'* 



62 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

** A strong desire begot on great despair, 
A great despair cast out by strong desire'' 

Hermaphroditus. 

" Shall make thee man and ease a woman's sighs, 
Or make thee woman for a man's delight." 

lb. 



** Till day like nig/U were shady, 
And night were bright like day'' 

** O sole desire of my delight! 
O sole delight of my desire ! " 



Fans tine. 



Fragoletta, 



** The delight that consumes the desire, 
The desire that outruns the delight." 

Dolores, 

** As the r^<^ to a serpent that hisses. 
As the serpe7tt again to a r^^." 

lb, 

*• As a new moon above spent stars thou wast ; 
But stars endure after the 77ioon is past." 

A Wasted Vigil, 

** And all these only like your name, 
And your name full of all of these." 



*' Ah that such sweet things should h^ fleet. 
Such fleet things sweet." 

" If you were I and I were you, 
How could I love you, say ? 
How could the roseleaf love the rue. 
The day love nightfaW and her dew. 
Though night may love the day f " 



lb. 



lb. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. d^ 

" He that strews red shall gather white. 
He that sows white reap red'' 

May Janet, 

•' Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter 
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep. 
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter 
We shall sleep." 

A Forsaken Garden, 

** For shame's sake and faines sake, 
Enough oi fame and shame." 

A Word for the Country, 

** Not a kindlier life or sweeter, 
Time, that lights and quenches men. 
Now may quench or light again." 

Epicede, 

** Man on us as God^ 
God as man hath trod." 

Christmas Antiphones, II. 

** Mingling 7ne and thee, 
When like light of eyes 
Flashed through thee and me, 
Truth shall make us free." 



Ib„ III. 



" No shadow, but rather 
God, father of song, 
Shew grace to me, Father 
God, loved of me long." 



Off Shore, 



** The sea has the sun for a harper, 
The sun has the sea for a lyre." 

By the North Sea, VII. 



64 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

" The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes 
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit j 
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, 
And the oat is heard above the lyre." 

Chorus in Atalanta in Calydon, 

" And circled pain about with pleasure, 
And girdled pleasure about with pain.'' 

lb, 

*' Surely most bitter of all sweet things thou art, 
And sweetest thou of all things bitter, love." 

Song in BothwelL 

" Sail on sail along the sea-line fades diwd flashes ; here on land 
Flash and fade the wheeling wings on wings of mews that 
plunge and scream." 

Midsummer Holiday, IX. 

No English poet approaches Swinburne in the frequency 
with which this device is employed ; * but that its harmonious 
effect, when not used to excess, was well known, is evident 
from the use made of it by Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis^ 
Lucrece^ and the Sonnets. It diffuses also a subtle melody 
throughout the following stanza of Hood's The Death-Bed^ the 
first two lines being an example of triple repetition : 

*' Our very hopes belied our fears, 
Our fears our hopes belied — 
We thought her dyi7ig when she slept. 
And sleeping when she died.'* 

* Rabelais in his Pantagruel puts the following lines in the mouth of 
Guillaume Cretin (Besant, Early French Poetry, p. 185) : 

*' Deff aides ce qu'estait refaict. 
Ref aides ce qu' estoit deff aid,'*'* 

But Swinburne rarely inverts and repeats two words that have occupied 
respectively the first and last places in a preceding line. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 



65 



As frequently as this device of double repetition recurs in 
Swinburne's verse, it is not his most characteristic method of 
making one line glide smoothly into another. This is oftener 
accomplished by the following varieties of repetition and par- 
allelism : 

(2) A Hne in which one word occurs twice is followed by a 
line in which another word occurs twice : * 

" And heard the chiming bridle smite and S7nite, 
And gave each rhyme thereof some rhyme again." y 

Laics Veneris. 

Here the unifying effect of the repetition employed in the 
first line is continued and intensified by a similar repetition in 
the next line. Other examples are : 

"I shall sleep, and Jiiove with the moving' ships, 
Change as the winds change, veer in the tide ; 
My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips, 
I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside." 

Triumph of Time. 

(The movement of the four lines just cited has always 
seemed to me unsurpassed in English verse. The rise and 
fall of the wave could hardly be better shown than in the 
rapidity of ** 1 shall rise with thy rising," and the slov/er, 
settling movement of " with thee subside.") 

" Glad, but not flushed w\\h. gladness. 
Since joys go by ; 
Sad, but not bent with sadness, 
Since sorrows die ; 

* Browning's famous lines in the Song, from A Blot in the * Scutcheon, 
owe much of their structural effect to this device : 

'' There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest ; 
And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest ; 
And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre 
Hid i' the harebell." 



66 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Deep in the gleaming glass 
She sees all past things pass, 
And all sweet life that was lie down and lie'' 

Before the Mirror , III. 

" With limbs from limbs dividing 
And breath by breath subsiding." 

Before Dawn. 

"You loved me and you loved me not ; 
A little, much, and oxtrmuch. 
Will you forget as I forget ? 

Let all dead things lie dead, none such 
Are soft to touch." 



'* I remember, forget, and remember 
What love saw done and undone.'" 



Felise. 



lb. 



*' Of days more sweet thd^n thou w^ast sweet to smell, 
O^flower-soii thoughts that came \.o flower and fell. 
Of loves that lived a lily's life and died, 
Of dreams now dwelling where dead roses dwell,'* 

Relics, 

" What, not one hour ? For star by star ih^ night 
Falls, and her thousands world by world iskt flight." 

A Wasted Vigil, 

*• There is no woman living that draws breath 
So sad as I, though all things sadden her. 
There is not one upon life's weariest way 
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death. 
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower 
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun." 

The Complaint of Lisa. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 

* ' One hour for sleep,' we said, ' and yet one other ; 
All day we served her, and who shall serve by night?' 
Not knowing oithtQ, thy face not knowing, O mother, 
O light wherethrough the darkness is as light.'' 

Mater Triump halts. 

'* Bright dank over dank 

Making glorious the gloom. 
Soft rank upon rank, 
Strange bloom after bloo7n'' 

Off Shore. 

*' I, last least voice of her voices. 

Give thanks that were mute in me long 
To the soul in my soul that rejoices 
For the song that is over my song.'' 

By the North Sea, VII. 

"Between the j^a-mark and the sea 
Joy grew to grief, grief grew to me ; 
Love turned to tears, and tears to fire, 
And dead delight to new desire ; 
Love s talk, love's touch there seemed to be 
Between the j-^a-sand and the sea.'' 

Song in Chastelard. 

** I saw them come and saw them flee 

Between the j'^^-foam and the sea." 

lb. 

Be night's dark word as the word of a wizard. 
Be the word of dawn as a god's glad word, 

Like heads of the spirits of darkness visored 
That see not for ever, nor ever have heard. 

These basnets, plu7ned as for fight or plurneXess, 
Crowned of the storm and by storm discrowned." 

Les Casquets. 

** We mourn for love of a song^\\?X outsang the lark. 
That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio's lover 
Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark." 

* Insularum Ocelle,* 



67 



68 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

Instead of the correspondence of verbal repetition, there is 
frequently the correspondence of alliteration : the initial sound 
is repeated instead of the whole word : 

•* Zoves that are /ost ere they come to birth, 
^eeds of the -ze/ave, without fruit upon earth. 
I /ose what I /ong for, save what I can, 
My love, my love, and no love for me." 

Triumph of Time. 
Indeed, Swinburne's combinations of alliteration would re- 
quire separate mathematical treatment. No defence can be 
made of such puerilities as, 

" Men touch them and change in a trice 
The /iHes and /anguors of T/irtue 
For the raptures and roses of ^ice. ** 

Dolores, 
or, 

** Where/aint sounds/alter and wan beams wade, 
^reak, and are broken, and sh^A into ^i^owers." 

Triuinph of Time, 

Swinburne has here joined corresponding half-lines by a 
species of alliterative parallelism : * 

f : f : : w : w, 
br : br : : sh : sh. 

(3) The repetition of one word throughout several lines may 
serve to give unity by binding the lines closer together. 

" Could love make worthy things of w^rMless, 
My song were worth an ear ; 

* Chaucer ventures upon this device only once, but with complete suc- 
cess. Cf. the Knightes Tale, 11. 1752-1753 : 

" Out <^rest the ^lood, with j/erne j/remes rede. 
With ;?2ighty waces the <^ones they to-3reste.'' 
Ten Brink, who cites these lines in his Chancers Sprache und Verskunst, 
Leipzig, 1884 (p. 201), omits **the" before "bones" (the Morris-Skeat 
edition retains it), and prefaces his citation with the remark, " Gelegentlich 
enthalt der Vers zwei verschiedene Stabreime, zwei Stabe in jedem Glied 
nach der Ordnung aa — bb.^^ 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 69 

Its note should make the day most mirthless 

The merriest of the year, 
And wake to birth all buds yet birtkltss, 

To keep your birthddiy dear." 

Six Years Old. 

*' Yea, with red sin the faces of them shine ; 
But in all these there v/as no si7t like mine ; 

No, not in all the strange great sins of them 
That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine." 

La us Veneris. 

** She walked between the blossom and the grass ; 
I knew the beauty of her, what she was. 

The beauty of her body and her sin, 
And in my flesh the sin of hers, alas ! " 

lb. 

'* Mother of loves that are swift to fade, 
Mother of mutable winds and hours, 
A barren mother, a, mother-Tna.id, 
Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers." 

Triumph of Time, 

" As afternoon /(^r^^/j- the dew, 
As time in \ax^^ forgets all men. 
As our old ^\3.CQ: forgets us two, 
Who might have turned to one thing then, 
But not again." 

Felise. 

*' Couldst thou not watch one hour, though I watch three ? 
Couldst thou not watch with me ? " 

A Wasted Vigil. 

" Son of the lightning and the light th3.t glows, 
Beyond the lightning's or the morning's light.'' 

For the Feast of Giordano Brtmo, I. 



70 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

*' Thou whose dir/k on earth 
Angels sang to men, 
While thy stars made mirth, 
Saviour, at thy dir^k, 
This day born again ; 

** As this night was bright 
With thy cradle-way. 
Very light of light, 
Turn the wild world's night 
To thy perfect day. 

'* God whose/"<?^/ made sweet 
Those wild ways they trod. 
From thy fragrant/^^/ 
Staining field and street 
With the blood of God : 



" God whose breast is rest 
In the time of strife. 
In thy secret breast 
Sheltering souls opprest 
From the heat of life." 

Christinas Antiphones, L 



*• The delight that he takes but in living 
Is more than of all things that live ; 
For the world that has all things for giving 
Has nothing so goodly to give'' 

By the North Sea, IV. 

** Though the many lights dwindle to one light, 
There is help if the heaven has 07ie ; 
Though the skies be discrowned of the stin\\^\\., 
And the earth dispossessed of the sun'' 

Dedication (to Edward Burne-Jones). 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 71 

*' Not earth's for spring and fall. 
Not earths at heart, not all 
Earths making, though men call 
Earth only mother." 

Ex-Voto, 

"What old-world son of thine, 
Made drunk with death as wine, 
Hath driuik the bright sea's brine 

With lips of laughter ? 
Thy blood they drink; but he 
Who hath drunken of the sea 
Once deeplier than of thee 
Shall drink not after." 

lb. 

The repeated word may bind the end of one line with the 
beginning of the next. It is the employment of this device "^ 
throughout a stanza that constitutes the structure already 
alluded to on pages 23-25. 

" Let us go hence, my songs : she will not hear ; 
Let us go hence together without fear. 
Keep silence now, for singing time is over, 
And over all old things and all things dear." 

A Leave-Taking, 

*' Yea, now, do I bid you love me, love P 
Love me or /oathe, we are one not twain." 

Les Noyades, 

" I will go back to the great sweet mother. 
Mother and lover of men, the sea." 

Triumph of Time, 

** Yea, I know this well : were you once sealed 7ni7ie, 
Mine in the blood's beat, 7nine in the breath." 

lb. 



72 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

**With sighing and with laughter and with tears. 
With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound." 

Laus Veneris, 

** And our hearts were fulfilled of the music he made with us, 
Made with our hearts and our lips while he stayed with us, 
Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight 
For a day and a night." 

At Parting. 

(^) Parallelism, or the repetition of constructions, is as 
frequent in Swinburne's verse as is the repetition of words. 
Many examples may be found in the selections already given. 
Others are : 

{a) " And wrought with weeping and laughter, 

(a) And fashioned with loathing and love, 
{b) With life before and after 

(b) And death beneath and above." 

Chorus in Atalanta in Calydon. 

There is perfect parallelism of structure here between the 
first and second lines, and the third and fourth. The lines that 
are not banded by rime are banded by successive parallelism. 
As stated before (page lo), parallelism is usually found joined 
with repetition. 

" Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower, 
Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire." 

Laus Veneris, 

*' Had you loved me once, as you liave not loved ; 
Had the chance been with us that has not been." 

Triwnph of Time. 

*' Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit, 
And time at fullest and all his dower." 

lb. 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 73 

Clear of the whole world, hidden at home, 
Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam." 

lb. 



*' The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, 
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder." 



lb. 



" There are sins it may be to discover, 
There are deeds it may be to delight. 
What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, 
What new passions for daytime or night ? " 

Dolores. 

** Blind buds that snows have shaken, 
Wild leaves that winds have taken." 

Garden of Proserpine, 

*' Land me, she says, where love 
Shows but one shaft, one dove, 

One heart, one hand. 
— A shore like that, my dear, 
Lies where no man will steer, 
No maiden land." 

Love at Sea. 

** Lord of light, whose shrine no hands destroy, 
God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses." 

Nine Years Old. 

'* Some with crying and wailing, some with notes like sound of bells 
that toll, 
Some with sighing and laughing, some with words that blessed 
and made us whole." 

Midsummer Holiday, IX. 

*' But your fathers bowed down to their masters 
And obeyed them and served and adored. 
Shall the sheep not give thanks to their pastors ? 
Shall the serf not give praise to his lord ? " 

A Word for the Country. 



74 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM 

" Light hearts with sad ; 
Crowned king with peasant, 
Pale past with present, 
Harsh hours with pleasant. 
Good hopes with bad." 

Song in Bothwell. 

*' The sweetness of spring in thine hair, and the light in thine eyes. 
The light of the spring in thine eyes, and the sounds in thine 
ears." 

Chorus in Atalanta in Calydon, 

** Take hands, and part with laughter ; 
Touch lips, and part with tears." 

Rococo, 

** Miles and miles and miles of desolation ! 
Leagues on leagues on leagues without a change ! " 

By the North Sea, IH. 

These four varieties of repetition, though not exhaustive, 
furnish far better than any traditional metrical analysis could 
do, what seems to me the true key to Swinburne's elaborate 
and complicated system of versification. Almost all of the 
examples given illustrate repetition in its twofold character, 
(i) as a means of producing harmony, and (2) as a means of 
banding separate lines by sameness or unity of sound and 
effect. 

It hardly needs to be pointed out that when confined to one 
line repetition still performs its double function, but in this 
case bands not lines but parts of lines. Thus each of the four 
varieties of repetition that have been mentioned is as fre- 
quently employed by Swinburne to band the parts of a single 
line as to band separate lines. The following are single line 
illustrations of each variety mentioned : 

(i) " Laboring he dreams, and labors in the dream.'' 

Laus Veneris, 

** Nets caught ih^ pike, pikes tore the net.'' 

Faustine, 



IN ENGLISH VERSE. 75 

By writing each as two lines, we get the two types of repeti- 
tion mentioned on pages 59-64 : 

** Labormg he dreams, 
And labors in the dreamt 

" Nets caught the pike. 
Pikes tore the net'' 

(2) ** Flesh of \\\s flesh, but heart of my heart'' 

Triumph of Time, 

** With /isp of /eaves and ripple of rain." 

Chorus in Atalanta in Calydon, 

(3) *' Wind, and light, and wind, and cloud, and wind,"'^ 

By the North Sea, III. 

(4) " Spray of song that springs in April, light of love that laughs 

through May," 

Midsu7n7ner Holiday, Y III. 

" Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges." 

Dolores. 

The epithet applied by Mr. Stedman to Swinburne, " a born 
tamer of words,*' does not seem to me an appropriate one, for 
Swinburne's range of vocabulary is not large, but surprisingly 
small. Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey, Brown- 
ing, and Tennyson are preeminent tamers of words ; but Swin- 
burne is a tamer not of words but of sounds. Words occur ^ 
and recur in his verses not so much for the sake of the words 
as for the sake of the sounds. Before a chord has ceased to 
vibrate, it is struck again and again and again. The thought 
when it moves at all moves at a snail's pace. The reader is 
reminded of the advance of the Crusaders, who, when in sight 
of Jerusalem, are described as 

" Taking two steps in advance, and one reluctantly backward." 

*Each example under (2), page 65, taken line by line, is an illustration 
of this principle. 



76 REPETITION AND PARALLELISM, 

In reading his Century of Roundels one cannot help feeling 
that the roundel with its difficult reticulations is but the nat- 
ural utterance of Swinburne. His most characteristic poems 
are but roundels ^^ writ large." 

Yet, in spite of the thinness and pallor of the thought, this 
mastery of sounds has had its effect upon the poetry of the 
day. Hardly a volume of verse has recently appeared in which 
^ traces of Swinburne may not be discovered. It is, of course, 
impossible to say whether these more recent imitators may not 
have taken their model at once from Baudelaire, Gautier, Ver- 
laine, and other leaders of French mysticism ; but it is more 
probable that Swinburne is himself the model. 

His own attitude toward the French mystics has changed 
since the appearance of his Poems and Ballads in 1866. While 
at first he imitated the diseased fantasies of the decadents as 
well as their technique, there is noticeable in the spirit of 
his later verse a partial return to what he himself has called 
the "high and wide things of nature, the color that grows 
in no greenhouse, but such as comes with morning upon the 
mountains." 



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The books have been beautifully illustrated from 
new designs, and the text in its arrangement is suited 
to the most approved and systematic methods of 
instruction. 

They are fully up with the times. The progress of 
geographical science is closely watched. All changes 
and facts, properly authenticated, are promptly noted 
and embodied in the text. 



MAURY'S ELEMENTARY GEOGRAPHY, . . $0.55 

MANUAL OF GEOGRAPHY, . . 1.25 

" PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, . . 1.20 



MA UR Y'S GEOGRAPHIES, 



O. H. Cooper, Superintendent Public Schools^ Galveston, Texas. 
** Maury's Geographies are like a continuous fountain from which 
something fresh is constantly flowing," 

A. G. Boyden, Principal State Normal School, Bridgewater , Mass. 
" We find the Revised Manual very satisfactory in the class-room — the 
best book for our use yet published. " 

J. M. Greenwood, Superintendent Schools, Kansas City, Mo. 
** Maury's Elementary Geography is my ideal of a Geography for the 
'little folks.'" 

Washington Catlett, Principal Cape Fear Academy y Wilmington, 
N. C. ** The more I read Maury's Geographies, the more I regret that 
I have not before been using them." 

Julia A. Eastman, Dana Hall, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass, 
*' The Elementary Geography is delightful enough to make one wish to 
begin the study over again." 

W. F. Rocheleau, Principal State Normal School, Moorhead, 
Minn. **I have adopted Maury's Revised Manual after a careful 
examination of all the standard geographies published during the past 
few years. Everything considered, I think I can do my pupils better 
service by placing the Manual in their hands than by giving them any 
other text-book on Geography." 

Louis G. Hoyt, Superintendent of Schools, Kingston, N. H. *'In 
Maury's Geographies the maps are exceptionally fine, and quite equal in 
a desirable blending of the physical and political features of different 
countries. A book, in my opinion, surpassed by none of the ten different 
geographies offered for our consideration." 

S. Gillespie, Superintendent of Schools of Clay County, Iowa. '* I 
consider Maury's Physical Geography the best work of its kind that has 
ever fallen into my hands. We used it as authority in our two weeks 
Normal Institute just closed, and instructors and teachers unite with me 
in recommending it." 

C. C. Rounds, Principal State Normal School, Plymouth, N. H. 
** Excellent before, the revision of Maury's Geographies makes the 
Elementary and Revised Manual still more worthy of public favor." 

James V. D. Ayers, Principal Union Free School and Academy, 
Catskill, N. Y. *' In Maury's Geographies the systematic and attractive 
arrangement of facts, the fullness without oppression, etc. , all show the 
carefulness and thoughtfulness with which these Geographies have been 
prepared. I know of none equal to them in scientific merit-" 



MAURY'S GEOGRAPHIES. 



Electa M. Porter, Gaston School, Boston^ Mass, *'I have never 
before seen a work vi^hich so exactly supplied my own need in the class- 
room as the Elementary Geography. The subject matter is extremely 
interesting, and the arrangement of topics thoroughly normal." 

The Journal of Education, Boston, Mass. " The success of the 
author and reviser in presenting these valuable characteristic features in 
the Manual is triumphant, and the work is one that commends itself to 
every intelligent teacher and student of Geography. The maps in this 
work, unequaled for beauty and accuracy, are executed with artistic skill. 
Its use will awaken the enthusiasm of pupils in the study, and guide the 
teacher to a presentation of the subject in a way to make a knowledge 
of geography a permanent and valuable acquisition. " 

W, F. Slaton, Superintendent City Schools, Atlanta y Ga. *'The 
Board of Education, the Superintendent, and every teacher in the 
schools of Atlanta have nothing but words of praise for Maury's 
Geographies. The pupils are delighted with them, and after thirty 
years' experience in the schoolroom, I can truly say that I have never 
taught any book which pleased me better." 

The New York School Journal, New York, N, Y. '' The 
lamented author of this volume [Revised Manual of Geography] has 
endeared himself to the schools of this country by preparing a ' royal 
road' to learning Geography. A careful examination shows that it 
possesses merit of the most substantial character." 

Henry E. Shepherd, President College of Charleston, S. C, and 
late Superintendent of Public Instruction, Baltimore, Md, ** Maury's 
Geographies — superior to any with which I am acquainted, in grace of 
illustration, luminous exposition of scientific truth, and happy co-ordina- 
tion of history with geography. No geographer who ever lived possessed 
in a more eminent degree the faculty of popularizing scientific truth than 
the late Commodore Maury. In clearness of presentation, perspicuity 
of style, and in the skill with which he exhibited the relations between 
cause and effect, he v/as, in my judgment, unsurpassed by Huxley, 
Agassiz, or Tyndall." 

Celeste E. Bush, recent Instructor in Geography and History, 
Connecticut State Normal School, New Britain, Conn. ** In Maury's 
Revised Manual of Geography the maps are as perfect as they could be 
in the present state of geographical knowledge and the chartographer's 
art. In descriptive text and appropriate illustrations, I consider Maury's 
the best book we have. " 



MAURY'S GEOGRAPHIES, 



W. T. Carrington, Principal High School, Oak Ridge, Mo, ** We 
could not teach Geography without Maury's Geographies." 

Hugh S. Thompson, ex-Gov. South Carolina, late State Super- 
iniendent Public Instruction, Columbia, S. C '' Maury's Geographies 
are among the most valuable of the contributions which men eminent 
for attainments in science have lately made to aid pupils in the acquiring 
of knowledge. The style is simple, the definitions are clear, the maps 
accurate, and the pictorial illustrations beautiful and instructive." 

William Harper, Superintendent Schools, Americus, Ga. '* Maury's 
Physical Geography presents the science in the captivating colors which 
rightly belong to it, and the student easily acquires a share of the 
author's abounding enthusiasm. The Revised Edition retains the charm 
of the author's style, while the work is greatly improved by the addition 
of Topical Analyses and a judicious condensation of the text. The 
* test questions ' will be found promotive of thoroughness and a constant 
inspiration to the pupil. In scientific accuracy the new edition is 
unsurpassed. The improvements made must render this sterling work 
more than ever a favorite." 

Isabella Parsels, Superintendent Training Department, City Normal 
College, New York, N, Y, '* Maury's Elementary Geography and his 
Revised Manual are exceedingly well adapted to the purpose for which 
they are designed. The treatment of the subject accords with the spirit 
of true educational principles. The text is bright and attractive, the 
maps excellent, and the dependence of political and industrial conditions 
upon physical laws is admirably shown throughout the series. '* 

John S. Beach, Vice-Principal Schools, Alexandria, Va. ** I find 
the Elementar}' Geography a most fascinating little book on Geography." 

A. L. Rucker, County Superintendent, Rutherford Co., N. C. 
*' Maury's Elementary Geography is fascinating ; simplicity simplified by 
attractiveness ; the normal multum in parvo ; the elementary of elemen- 
taries." 

H. B. G'wyn, recent City Supt. Public Free Schools, Galveston, Texas, 
*' After careful examination and comparison, I was convinced that 
Mauiy's Elementary Geography, and Maury's Revised Manual of Geog- 
raphy (the new series, in two books), are better adapted to use in our 
schools than any others presented. They are now used in our schools, 
giving eminent satisfaction." 

Geo. D. Alexander, President Minden Female College, Minden, 
La. '* Maury's Manual of Geography [Revised] is now the best work 
on Geography I have ever seen. The faculty concur with me in this 
iypinion." 



"INCOMPARABLY THE BEST." 

Holmes' New Readers. 

BY 

GEO. F. HOLMES, LUD., 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 

ASSISTED BY 

L. W. ANDERSON, and FRANK A. HILL, A.M., 

LATE OF ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL, HEAD MASTER ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL, 

BOSTON, MASS. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



Ijessons. — A large part of the material in the first 
four books is entirely original. It has been contributed 
by well-known popular authors who have had in view, 
while writing, the special purpose of each volume. 

Methods. — In primary work no one method has 
been exclusively followed. A judicious combination 
has been made of what is practically valuable in the 
Word, the Phonic, and the Sentence methods. 

Grading, — Great care has been exercised to secure 
proper gradation. There are no gaps in the series. 
The pupils can pass without difficulty from one book 
to the next higher. 

New Words. — The number of new words intro- 
duced in each lesson has been carefully limited. Ample 
directions are given for their study, and the most diffi- 
cult ones have been defined. 

Language Lessons. — Brief, practical language 
.lessons have been added to assist pupils in using cor- 
rectly the new words acquired. This, however, does 
not interfere with the character of the books as ReaderSe 



HOLMES' NEW READERS. 



The beautiful script models in the first three volumes 
of the series will be found of practical value. 

The drill exercises in articulation and elocution have 
been prepared with great care. 

Illustrations. — The illustrations were designed 
and engraved by some of the foremost artists of the 
country. They are not simply entertaining^ but /V/- 
structive. 

Manufacture. — The paper is of superior quality, 
taking a clear and beautiful impression of the type and 
cuts. The books are bound in a neat and substantial 
manner. The educational worth of the text, the 
excellent mechanical execution of the books, and their 
comparatively low price, make the series the best and 
cheapest in the market. 



HOLMES' NEW FIRST READER, 15 cents. 

" " SECOND «* 25 ** 

«* " THIRD '' 40 '' 

« " FOURTH '' 50 ** 

" «i FIFTH ** 72 " 



A. J. Newby, Principal, Chicago , III.: "Holmes' New Readers, 
from First to Fifth, are admirable in their selection of matter and in 
grading, and beautiful in their illustrations. The literature in both First 
and Second Readers is genuine 'child literature,' and comes within a 
child's vocabulary. The stories are bright and sufficiently varied. I do 
not see how little people can fail to be greatly interested in these books^ 
or how the teacher, no matter what her ' method ' may be, can fail in 
securing the most gratifying results. " 



HOLMES* NEW READERS. 



New England Journal of Education, Boston. " They are made 
upon the plan of helping teachers teach the child to read. Every new word 
and sentence has a picture to suggest it. They contain beautiful illus- 
trations — illustrations that would not lose by comparison with those in 
some of the exquisite holiday books that come to our hands. In the 
realm of School Readers it would be difficult to find any, for children of 
the ages for which these are written, better adapted, more beautifully 
illustrated, or with exercises more judiciously selected. " 

Hon. Solomon Palmer, ex- State Supt, Education, East Lake^ 
Ala. ** I have just examined with more than ordinary interest and care 
the new series of Holmes' Readers, and take great pleasure in voluntarily 
saying that, for cheapness, mechanical execution, beauty of illustrations, 
and appropriateness of reading matter, they have no superiors, and I 
have not yet seen their equals. The style of the reading lessons is so 
simple and well adapted to childhood, and the copious illustrations so 
bright and true to nature that these Readers are bound to delight the 
children and meet a long-felt want among progressive teachers. I sin- 
cerely hope these Readers may find great favor everywhere. I cheerfully 
commend them to the teachers of Alabama." 

New York School Journal, New York : " No person interested in 
School Readers can fail of being delighted with this new series. Their 
attractive appearance, beautifully executed engravings, fine paper, and 
clear, large type, go to make up the characteristics of a perfect book. 
The stories, reading lessons, poetry, and script maintain the same ex- 
cellence, and are as perfect in their preparation. The illustrations are 
beautiful, some of them representing natural history and botany.'* 

Lawton B. Evans, Superintendent of Public Schools ^ Augusta , Ga. 
" I have a very high opinion of Holmes* Readers, as you already know. 
I consider them well arranged for teaching children, and of good type 
good pictures, good paper, and good binding. The lessons are carefully 
chosen and are admirably adapted to class work.*' 

R. A. Hideout, Principal High School^ Everett^ Mass. ** 1 examined 
the books with sufficient care to discover sterling merit in them. In fact 
I was unusually well pleased with them, and soon after ordered a quantity 
of the Second, Third, and Fourth Readers." 

Arthur Burch, Principal i6th District School, Milwaukee, Wis. 
** I am much pleased with my experience in the use of Holmes* Readers. 
I know of no books that suit my ideal of what a reading book should be 
better than yours.** 

W. Harper, Superintendent of Public Schools, Americus, Ga. 
** Holmes' New Readers must be classed among the very best." 



HOLMES' NEW READERS. 



Jos. M. Dill, South Alabama Female Institute y Greenville ^ Ala. 
'*It gives me pleasure to bear testimony to the excellence of Holmes' 
New Readers. We introduced them into our Model Department last 
February, and are pleased with them. Our teachers are fully impressed 
with their excellence. I congratulate the publishers on their success in 
preparing a Model Reader. ** 

Mrs. T. J. Merrick, Safi Antonio, Texas. ''Please accept my 
best thanks for the beautiful Reader. I have perused it from beginning 
to end, and put an admiration point on every page. I would certainly 
use all my persuasive powers to have it in our schools. Even the dumb 
paper is grateful to the touch, so smooth and perfect." 

Cora A. Newton, Haverhill^ Mass. ** We have used Holmes* New 
Readers. They have proved to be pleasant, profitable reading for the 
pupils. The type is clear, and illustrations good.*' 

S. H. Bartlett, Superintendent of Schools, Montgomery y Ala. "I 
have carefully examined Holmes' New Readers, and am highly pleased 
with the style of the reading matter, beauty of illustrations, and the ex- 
ercises in language lessons, articulation, inflection, and composition." 

J. J. Mapel, President State Normal School , Milwaukee, Wis. "The 
first three numbers of the series are giving perfect satisfaction. I am 
very much pleased with them, both as to typography and illustration, 
and the character and the arrangement of the matter." 

A. H. Merritt, Superintendent Schools , Pittsboro, N. C. ** Holmes* 
New Readers are excellent and attractive. They are fully up with the 
latest approved methods. Of the many series of Readers before the 
public, we now place Holmes' first." 

Edward Burgess, Superintendent Schools, Poughkeepsie, N. V, 
*' The subjects suggest not only interesting reading, but useful informa- 
tion as well. We use your Readers for supplementary reading, and they 
are especial favorites w^ith our teachers. I consider the whole series an 
admirable one, not inferior to iny in use." 

B. F. Hathaway, Northfield, Minn. " I have examined your 
Readers with some care and attention. These books will certainly stand 
the test of originality, and I trust will meet the expectations of their 
warmest friends. I have given them to my primary teachers to examine 
and to use. They are attractive, their selections are nicely arranged, 
type excellent." 

P. P. Claxton, Superintendent City Schools, Asheville, N. C. "I 
am very much pleased with the whole series. I do not know of any 
better." 



HOLMES' NEW READERS, 



T. F. MacBeth, Cooper Normal College, Daleville, Miss. ** They 
are in every respect model text-books — bright, fresh, and charm- 
ing in subject matter, exceedingly well graded^ and elegantly gotten up. 
The clean, clear pages are a positive delight to the eye. I notice through- 
out these books that definitions do actually define — a rare but excellent 
thing in Readers. The language lessons at the end of each selection 
are models in their way. I don't see how the books could be improved 
so as to make them more attractive, interesting, instructive, or teachable** 

W. A. G. Brown, Superintendent of Schools, Hendersonville , N, C. 
"There are many admirable series of Readers, and the best endorse- 
ment I can give the New Readers of Holmes is, that I really think they 
surpass all others in the characteristics of good text-books on this sub- 
ject. I am not saying this just to please, but because I think so." 

Miss M. L. Ten Eyck, Principal Washington School, Minneapolis, 
Minn. *' The Holmes' Readers are admirable books. We shall order 
for our use, as supplementary reading, some of the Readers in the near 
future." 

O. S. Williams, Superintendent of Schools, Nashua, N. H. "I 
have examined them with considerable care. I find the arrangement and 
method of presentation very superior. The use of script is according to 
the most improved method. I have been so much pleased with the 
Readers, as a whole, that I have put them on my list as among the very 
best in the market, and shall order of you when new reading matter is 
needed." 

John G. Magiler, San Antonio, Texas. ** Holmes* Second Reader 
has been received. It has been a pleasure to turn over its neatly-printed 
pages. The book recommends itself not only on account of its care- 
fully selected subject matter, but also because of its happy illustrations, 
so well executed. " 

Walter Hazard, Georgetown, S. C. '* I do not hesitate to say that 
so far as I can judge from the cursory examination I have been able to 
give them. Holmes* Readers are the handsomest series of books I have 
ever seen." 

W. O. Riddell, Prof. Literature and Rhetorical Studies, Normal 
School and Academy, Woodbine, Iowa. *' It is hard to make choice 
among School Readers. Some recommend themselves on account of 
price, and some on account of quality of paper, binding, etc. Of all 
the School Readers I have yet seen yours are the most beautiful, and our 
primary teachers say, the best." 



THOUGHT METHOD. 



The Davis 



Reading Books. 



BY 

EBEN H. DAVIS, A.M 

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHELSEA, MASS. 



General Features. — These books, made by a 
practical educator, present only such methods as have 
been found successful in the class-room. 

These points may be noted : 

The careful grading ; only short sentences occurring 
in the lower numbers. 

Full page illustrations for language work. 

Frequent lessons in manners and morals. 

Selections from the best American and English 
classics. 

A large amount of reading matter well graded in 
four books. 

The Beginner's Reading Book keeps constantly 
in view the fact that children learn to read tJirough the 
exercise of sight and memory. The sentences are short 
in the first of the book, such as can be apprehended at 
a single glance before utterance. The lessons are easy, 
childlike and interesting. 



THE DA VIS READING BOOKS. 



The Second Reading Book presents, in Part I., 
short stories of classic origin, review lessons, and 
valuable hints as to best methods of speech, etc.; in 
Part 11. , classic stories and fables. 

The Third Reading Book introduces the pupils 
at once to the writings of some of the most popular 
authors of juvenile literature, whose names are house- 
hold words. Like the two preceding books it has full- 
page illustrations for ** Exercises in Language.*' It 
has a vocabulary for drill work. 

The Fourth Reading Book is made up of selec- 
tions from writers of the purest English, special promi- 
nence being given to American authors. It contains 
many of the world's masterpieces. At the close of 
the book are found Gray's *' Elegy" and the ** Deserted 
Village," entire, with notes and meanings, and a full 
synopsis of Shakespeare's *^ Julius Caesar," with extended 
extracts. 



In excellence of typography and printing, superior 
quality of paper and thoroughness of manufacture^ 
these books have highest rank. 



DAVIS' BEGINNER'S READING BOOK, 
SECOND 
" THIRD 

" FOURTH " " 



25 


cents, 


40 


(< 


56 


i< 


80 


(( 



THE DA VIS READING BOOKS, 



O. M. Lord, Superintendent of Schools, Portland y Ale. " We have 
used the lower grades of the Davis Readers in the Portland Schools for 
the past year, and are much pleased with them. They are bright, 
attractive, and well graded. I am happy to recommend them." 

Larkin Dunton, LL.D., Head Master Normal School^ Boston, 
Mass. "They are a charming set of Readers. They are equally well 
adapted to any reasonable method of teaching reading. I congratulate 
you on the success of your undertaking." 

S. F. Blodgett, Superinte7tdent of Schools , Milford, Mass. * * We 
have used the Davis Readers in the Milford schools the past year, and 
I am more than pleased with the results obtained. I consider the first 
book to be the best book for beginners that I have seen." 

F. B. Richardson, Superintendent of Schools^ Woburn, Mass. 
** Since my last note to you we have added more of the Davis Readers, 
and find them very satisfactory. Their best recommendation is that the 
teachers are constantly requesting them." 

B. B, Russell, Superintendent of Schools, Brockton, Mass. " We 
have been using the Davis Readers during the past year, and our 
teachers without exception speak in the highest terms of them. 

C. L, Hunt, Superintendent of Schools, Clinton, Mass. '* The 
Davis Fourth Reader has been used in the Clinton schools the past year. 
I have never had in any schools under my supervision a reading book 
that has given better satisfaction." 

Stephen Peabody, Chairman Grammar School Committee, Newbury- 
port, Mass. '* I am very much pleased with the Davis Readers. They 
are interesting and spirited — free from dulness and prosy moralizings. " 

W. E, Chaffin, Superintendent of Schools, Dennis and Chatham, 
Mass. " The Davis Readers are of unusual merit and value, and are 
very satisfactory in all respects as text-books for the public schools." 

S. A. Ellis, Superintendent, Rochester, N. Y. '* The method of 
the * Beginner's Reading-Book ' in teaching young beginners to read is 
quite similar to that pursued by our primary teachers, and need I say, 
with excellent results. The suggestions to teachers contained in the 
teacher's edition of the Reader are excellent, and must prove very valu- 
able, especially to all young teachers who are without experience." 

S. A. Goodenough, Principal, Scotch Plains, N.J. ** For the 
past five years I have examined carefully the subject of readers and at 
last have found in the '' Davis Readers " the fullest satisfaction. They 
are practical in every sense and I believe the best for Public School use." 



THE DA VIS READING BOOKS, 



I» N. Mitchell, Superintendent, Fond du Lac, Wis. ***The 
Beginner's Reading Book ' I think a very excellent book. The prelim- 
inary chapter on ' How to Teach Reading ' is in accord with the methods 
in use by the best teachers, and will render it of special assistance to the 
host of teachers who wish to do progressive work, and yet who do not 
know just how to go to work." 

A» M. Sperry, Superintendent, Wasioga, Minn, *' I am delighted 
with the way its method, the only normal one, is worked out in this 
series of progressive lessons. Placed in the hands of intelligent teachers 
it would solve the vexed question of how to teach reading." 

G. C. Fisher, Superintendent, Weymouth, Mass, *' One has only 
to open the book to see that there are years of successful achievement 
behind it, and that only one who is skilled in teaching and knows the 
child's mind could produce such a book," 

F. Putney, Superintendent, Gloucester, Mass. *'Supt. Davis knows 
his business. He is not afraid to get down to the plane of children, 
hence his ability to reach them and aid others in doing the same. The 
book is a product of experience. It is a success." 

J. A. Graves, Principal South School, Hartford, Conn. '* The 
sentences of the * Beginner's Reading Book ' are well selected and of 
convenient length, and the vocabulary is an excellent one. All the good 
points might have been expected in a book prepared by Mr. Davis." 

L. J, Rundlett, Superintendent, Concord, N.H. '* They are models 
in arrangement and style, coinciding with the most approved ideas upon 
the subject of which they treat." 

W. M. Balliet, Superintendent, Springfield, Mass. ** I have re- 
viewed the * Beginner's Reading Book ' which you sent me. I like it. 
We shall want it for reading during the year." 

Charles E. Bennett, Principal Linden Street School, Pittsfield, 
Mass, ** My primary teachers like the book better than any other they 
have yet used. They like particularly well the script first, followed by 
the print and the short sentences." 

Amanda Landes, State Normal School, Millersville, Pa. *' I am 
so much pleased with the Davis Readers that I shall recommend them 
to my classes in pedagogy, as particularly helpful in teaching reading as 
I advise in my lectures." 

G. I. Aldrich, Superintendent of Schools, Quincy, Mass. "The 
Davis Readers have been in use here since their first appearance. They 
grow in favor with continued acquaintance, and I can recommend the 
series as worthy a large share of public favor." 



The Clarendon 

Dictionary. 

BY 

WILLIAM HAND BROWNE, 

ASSOCIATE OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 
THE PRONUNCIATION BY 

S. S. HALDEMAN, LL.D., 

LATE PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



A concise Handbook of the English Language, in 
Orthography, Pronunciation, and Definitions, for School, 
Home, and Business use. 

It aims to combine the qualities of accuracy, clearness, 
and conciseness, so as to include in the smallest compass 
the largest usefulness. By a skillful utilization of space, an 
unusual amount of information is presented in a very com- 
pact and distinct manner, easy to consult. 

In the preparation of the definitions, the leading authori- 
ties, both English and American, as well as standard techni- 
cal and scientific text-books and encyclopaedias, have been 
consulted. 

The spelling conforms to that of the best authorities, 
which have been carefully compared. 

The Clarendon Dictionary contains many words of 
recent introduction into general use, and found elsewhere 
only in late editions of the cumbrous quartos. 

The vocabulary is given in clear and distinct Clarendon 
type, which enables the eye to catch quickly the word 
sought for. 

The entire typography is bright and helpful to the eye. 
Many illustrative wood-cuts adorn the work, and explain to 
the eye the meaning of words. 

Extended pronouncing lists of Geographical names and 
Scripture names are given, as also French and Italian 
Phrases, Latin Phrases, and common abbreviations used in 
writing and printing. 

i8mo, cloth, 372 pages. Specimen copy at introduction 
price, 45 cents. 



THE CLARENDON DICTIONARY, 



C. F. P. Bancroft, /'nw. Philips Academy y Andovety Mass, **I 
have used habitually the little Clarendon Dictionary. Webster is behind 
me and Worcester at my right, but I seize the handy Clarendon for spell- 
ing, pronunciation, and sometimes for definitions." 

C. C. Rounds, Prin. State Normal School^ Plymouth, N. H, '* The 
Clarendon Dictionary is a gem. The clearness of its concise definitions, 
its definite indication of pronunciation, the remarkable beauty of its 
typography, its small size and low price, admirably adapt it for school 
use, and entitle it to a place in every school desk." 

W. N. Ackley, Supi. Schools, Warren, R. I, "I consider it one of 
the very best of the kind. In clearness of type it cannot be excelled. 
The judicious selection of words most used and needed in every-day life, 
and the intelligible nature of the definitions, render it very desirable. It 
is a handy reference book for any person, young or old." 

Chas. S. Haskell, Master Athens School, North Weymouth, Mass. 
** For ordinary Grammar School use, I have never seen its equal.*' 

W. S. Perry, Supt. Public Schools, Ann Arbor, Mich, *'Its clear- 
ness, compactness, fullness, and cheapness make it a most elegant book 
for ordinary school use." 

Geo. A. "BovitadLny East Hartford, Conn. '*I know of no other so 
convenient, accurate, clear in type, concise, and reliable in definition and 
pronunciation." 

Selah Howell, Prin. Bromfield School, Harvard, Mass. "The 
Clarendon Dictionary is kept where it can be found with most ease, for 
it is in constant use. I am free to say it is the best little dictionary I 
have been able to find." 

C. C. Thach, Prof. Eng. Lit. etc., Ala. Agric, and Mech. Coll., 
Auburn, Ala. " It is good at all points. Its typographical features are 
particularly praiseworthy ; while its scholarship and accuracy are all that 
could be desired. The pronunciation conforms to the highest and most 
recent authority." 

J. E, Goodrich, P7'of University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt. 
* * The Clarendon Dictionary is a capital hand-book for the student — as 
good as it is cheap. I recommend it without reserve." 

Thos. Hunter, Pres't City Normal College, New York City. '*It 
is a most useful little volume, beautifully gotten up, and admirably fitted 
for common, every-day use. It is compact and handy, and contains 
everything that the ordinary writer would require. For young students 
it would be invaluable." 



THE CLARENDON DICTIONARY. 



T. M. Robertson, Prin. Academy, Pleasant Lodge, N, C. "The 
best dictionary for primary and intermediate classes that has come to my 
notice." 

M. A. Newell, Prin. Maryland State Normal School, Baltimore, 
Md. ** I have looked at the Dictionary. It bears looking at. I have 
looked into it. It bears looking into. It is compact, comprehensive, 
accurate. I shall recommend it for students' individual use in the Nor- 
mal School." 

Irwin Shepard, Preset State Normal School, Winona, Minn. 
'* Your beautiful Clarendon Dictionaiy is a marvel of convenience, com- 
pleteness, and cheapness." 

J. W. Stearns, Pres't State Normal School, Whitewater, Wis. 
" By virtue of its compactness, clearness, convenience of size and shape, 
and admirable print, the Clarendon Dictionary at once takes a place on 
my writing desk as a handy book of reference. It seems to me a model 
of excellent workmanship, both in the preparation of the material and in 
mechanical execution. " 

W. J. Milne, Prin. State Normal School, Geneseo, N. Y. "A com- 
pact and useful book for the average student. It contains so much use- 
ful matter, and is so tasteful in appearance, that it must be regarded as a 
marvelously cheap book." 

J. Fraise Richard, Mansfield Normal College, Mansfield, Ohio. 
* ' The book is a perfect model of artistic neatness, and is just what our 
teachers and students everywhere need. It is concise, accurate, system- 
atic, and practical. I am both surprised and gratified to find so much 
that is valuable — indispensable — condensed into so brief a space." 

William Harper, Supt. Schools, Americus, Ga. ** It is a marvel of 
cheapness and excellence, and, in all respects, fully worthy of the com- 
mendations it has received." 

E. A. Sheldon, Prin. State Normal and Training School, Oswego, 
N. Y. "The Clarendon Dictionary seems to me happily adapted to 
the purpose for which it was intended, and will meet a want in the family 
and the school which has not been so well provided for before. " 

Joseph McMurran, Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, W. Virginia. 
■'The Clarendon Dictionary is certainly a treasure to the student, and 
far superior to any other of its kind." 

Edward Conant, Prin. State Normal School, Randolph, Vt. ** The 
Clarendon Dictionary pleases me much. In both matter and method it 
excels any other dictionary of similar size and price." 



TWO-BOOK SERIES, 

Venable's 

New Arithmetics. 

BY 

CHARLES S. VENABLE, LL.D., 

PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 

THOROUGHLY REVISED AND IMPROVED. 



The constant aim of the author in this revised series has 
been not only to provide the pupil with work thoroughly- 
graded, so that each step is the sufficient training for the 
step that follows ; but, also, to present the work in such 
variety of form as at once to maintain the interest of the 
pupil, and to render his judgment independent of the form. 
Throughout both books of the series, the theoretical and the 
technical have been subordinated in the work of the pupil 
to the practical. 

The series contains a greater number of concrete oral 
and written problems than any other series. The oral 
problems precede the written problems in each subject, and 
are as numerous as in most mental arithmetics, being given 
in percentage and in interest and their applications, as well 
as in the less advanced subjects. It is believed that this 
feature of the book will be especially approved by teachers. 

The two books of the series have been made to be con- 
sistent, the definitions and drill exercises of the one corres- 
ponding with those of the other. Each, however, is pro- 
vided with business forms, etc., and is complete in itself. 



VENABLE'S NEW ARITHMETICS. 



NEW ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC. i2mo, 224 pp. 
An elementary treatise for primary classes. 

Part I. presents in a pleasing form so much of the Grube 
and other methods as is generally accepted by successful 
teachers. The teacher of pupils in the first two years of 
school will find this part of the book all that can be desired. 
The part may also be used for oral review by more advanced 
pupils. 

Part II. avoids the abstract and the theoretical, and pre- 
sents thoroughly well-graded examples and problems, illus- 
trating the fundamental rules, federal money, common and 
decimal fractions, thus completing the work of the primary 
and intermediate, or lower grammar grades. The definitions 
are few. The explanations are clear. The more familiar 
tables in denominate numbers are taught and applied. 

The Elementary Arithmetic commends itself to the 
teacher by its bright typography^ by its methods, and by its 
great variety of concrete oral and written problems. Busi- 
ness forms and percentage, with its applications, are briefly 
treated at the end of the book. 

Price, for examination or introduction, 40 cents. 



NEW PRACTICAL ARITHMETIC. i2mo,384Pp. A 
comprehensive hand-book for more advanced classes. 

This is a book of problems, oral and written. The aim 
of the author has been to help the teacher by supplying for 
the pupil graded work that will not only command his 
interest, but that will constantly exercise his judgment. 

The necessary rules and definitions are presented. The 
object of the book is, however, not to multiply rules but to 
imify them, and, by work, to train the pupil with a few 
underlying principles constantly in view, so that, finally, the 
pupil can deduce his own rules. 

Price, for examination or introduction, 68 cents. 



VENABLE'S MA THEM A TICS. 



VENABLE'S EASY ALGEBRA.— An Easy Algebra 
for Beginners. 

For a large proportion of the pupils of the American public schools — 
even high schools so-called — such a knowledge of Algebra can be obtained 
from it as will be of more practical value than from the more extended 
and theoretical treatises. The definitions are concise and clear, and the 
explanations brief and simple, and yet the true essence of Algebra is 
presented and illustrated. The graded steps are clearly defined, and 
the pupils are made to understand the principles of the science. The 
miscellaneous examples are numerous and well chosen, and the review 
questions excellent. Price, 60 cents. 

VENABLE'S HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA.-For High 
Schools and Academies. 

This book aims to train learners to a thorough knowledge of algebraic 
language, and the acquisition of a practical facility in the use of algebraic 
symbols. The lack of this knowletige and facility greatly increases the 
difficulties of advanced students. Therefore, the author seeks to ground 
the pupil thoroughly in these things. 

Throughout the book, the demonstrations are clear and easily intelli- 
gible. The examples for exercise are numerous. All the fundamental 
algebraic operations on entire quantities and fractions are presented, and 
are treated in an elementary, simple manner. The book is thus suffi- 
ciently full and complete for the entire requirements of a very large class 
of students. Price, $1.00. 

A Key, containing solutions to problems, is issued for the use of 
teachers. Price, 75 cents. 



VENABLE'S GEOMETRY. — With Introduction to 
Modern Geometry. 

Embracing both Plane Geometry and Geometry in Space, prepared 
from a new translation of a late edition of Legendre. The pages are 
unusually bright and open in typography and diagrams. 

To each book are added numerous Exercises adapted to the theorems 
of the book. These Exercises are such as have been thoroughly tested 
in the instruction of classes in Elementary Geometry. At the close of 
the book are Hints to Solutions which serve as a guide to the study of 
geometrical analysis. 

There has also been added an Appendix of about fifty pages, con- 
taining a lucid Introduction to the leading principles and theorems of 
Modern Geometry. 

The price for introduction is : for Edition without Appendix, $1.40 ; 
with Appendix, $1.50. 



VENA BLE'S NEW A Rl THME TICS. 



J. P. '^cGviive, McGuire's School, Richmond y Va. *' The singular 
teaching power of the examples as displayed in their skilful grading — 
each subordinate group serving as a sort of drill table for clearing and 
fixing some phase of the thinking and work — it is just in this all im- 
portant point, skilful teaching by examples — that the books seem to me 
to excel." 

Louise M. Patten, Principal South Grammar School, Pittsfieldy 
Mass. *' I am pleased to say that the four principals (of Grammar 
Schools, having examined several arithmetics) consider Venable's New 
Practical Arithmetic the best, and the City Superintendent has forwarded 
you an order for a supply of the books." 

T. A. Steele, Head Master University School, Kansas City, Mo. 
" I find Venable's New Practical Arithmetic an excellent book. I deter- 
mined to adopt it as soon as I had made an examination of it." 

L. R. Holland, County Superintendent, Roanoke County, Va. *' I 
regard your Revised Arithmetics as admirably suited to the wants of our 
public schools." 

J. H. Phillips, Superintendent Public Schools, Birmingham, Ala. 
*' Their use in our schools shows them to be admirably adapted for 
graded school work. The best works on the subject yet presented to the 
public." 

Jennie R. Campbell, Harlan Court House, Ky. "I am much 
pleased with Venable's New Practical Arithmetic and very glad to intro- 
duce into my school. " 

C. A. Strout, Webster, Mass. '* I think Venable's New Arith- 
metics superior to any I have used. They contain just enough and not 
too much, and the subject is presented according to sound principles." 

L. B. Bissell, Stanhope, N". J. ''1 am exceedingly pleased with 
Venable's New Arithmetics. I think they are graded better than any 
works of the kind I have ever examined." 

T. A. Futrall, Marianna, Ark. '* Of all the Arithmetics I have 
examined, Prof. Venable's New Practical seems to me the best. I am 
using it in my best Arithmetic class, and shall put it in the hands of 
other classes soon. I shall recommend it in all of my institute work next 
summer." 

Jennie S. DeVoe, Model Department, State Normal School, Flor- 
ence, Ala. '* Am more than pleased with the ' New Elementary.' An 
exceedingly practical work ; makes numbers a real thing to the pupil." 



ANALYTICAL METHOD. 

Sanford'S Arithmetics 

BY 

SHELTON P. SANFORD, A.M., 

PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN MERCER UNIVERSITY, GEORGIA. 



These books are based on the analytic system, the 
method of teaching Arithmetic employed by the best 
and most progressive educators. It is the natural 
method. It lessens the labor of the teacher and 
facilitates the work of the pupil. It furnishes that 
mental discipline and training of the reasoning powers 
so essential to the full development of the pupil. 

The solutions are clear and simple. The humblest 
capacity can comprehend them and the most advanced 
students are aided. 

The definitions are given in language that is clear 
and concise. 

The development of the science in advancing from 
one subject to another is natural, and by steps that are 
suited to the capacity or attainments of the pupil. 
Commencing with simple processes and explanations, 
there is a regular gradation to the more difficult parts 
of the science. 

The pupil is constantly taught to rely on himself. 
He not only learns how to perform each operation, but 
he is also shown the reason underlying the operation. 



SANFORD'S ARITHMETICS. 



The work is practical. Copious problems are given, 
such as daily occur in the ordinary business of life. 

The extensive and sustained use of these books 
attests their peculiar adaptation to the needs of a 
large and widely extended class of schools. 



SANFORD^S PRIMARY ARITHMETIC . . . $0.20 

INTERMEDIATE ARITHMETIC . .36 

*' COMMON SCHOOL ARITHMETIC . .64 

" HIGHER ARITHMETIC . . . i.oo 



ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA . . i.oo 



J. N. Correll, County Superintendent, Alexander Co., N. C. "I 
have used Sanford's Arithmetics for ten years with great satisfaction. 
I get better results from them than from any other series I have tried. " 

John C. Scarborough, Raleigh, N. C. '' When State Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, among other books and after a long and 
careful examination, I recommended Sanford's Series of Arithmetics to 
the State Board of Education, and they were adopted for the schools of 
the State. I see now no sufficient reason for changing my opinion, and 
cheerfully give them my endorsement." 

J. F. Gregory, County School Cof?imissioner y Lancaster Co., S. C. 
''Sanford's Arithmetics were adopted by our County Board in 1888 and 
have been used ever since with great satisfaction. The teachers agree 
with me that they are the best Arithmetics ever used in this county." 

Lawton B. Evans, Superintendent City Schools, Augusta, Ga. 
"We still find Sanford's Arithmetics perfectly satisfactory in every par- 
ticular. Our pupils have acquired a high standard of mathematical 
excellence. 



SANFORD'S ARITHMETICS, 



B. M. Zettler, Superintendent of Schools ^ Macon, Bibb Co., Ga. 
"I have no reason to change the good opinion I have heretofore held 
of Sanford's Arithmetics. We have been using them in our schools since 

1873." 

C. I. Munnerlyn, County School Commissioner, Decatur Co., Ga. 
** Experience more than justifies our adoption of Sanford's Arithmetics. 
We regard these Arithmetics as the very best for public schools." 

W. S. Ramsay, County School Commissioner ^ Laurens Co., Ga, 
'* Prof. Sanford is entitled to the thanks of the teachers and patrons of 
all our schools for moving the profession forward two decades in the art 
of teaching Arithmetic." 

H. J. Lang, County School Commissioner, Lincoln Co., Ga. " San- 
ford's books are here to stay. They give universal satisfaction." 

J as. K. Powers, President State Normal College ^ Florence, Ala. 
**In 1889 I cast my vote and influence in Lauderdale County for Sanford's 
series of Arithmetics. The books were adopted and are now in most 
satisfactory use in the county. The value of the series has enhanced in 
my estimation since its adoption." 

Jos. M. Dill, South Alabama Female Institute, Greenville, Ala. 
*' I have been using Sanford's Arithmetics for three years in this place 
and have no desire to make a change. " 

A. W. Tate, Superintendent Schools, Woodlawn, Ala. "I have 
tested Sanford's Arithmetics alongside of half a dozen other popular 
texts, and I am frank to say it is the best book that I have seen. " 

J. W. Henderson, Natchez, Miss. '* In the Natchez schools we 
have used Sanford's Arithmetics during the past three years, and in the 
County of Adams during the past two years. We continue to be fully 
satisfied with our action as taken at that time." 

T. G. Harris, Superintendent City Public Schools, Dallas, Texas. 
'* Sanford's Arithmetics are in exclusive use in the Dallas schools, and 
the pupils and teachers are pleased with them. They are, in my opinion, 
decidedly the best series of Arithmetics I have ever used or examined." 

J. E. Smith, Superintendent City Schools, San Antonio, Texas. 
' * We are u.sing Sanford's Common School Arithmetic here with great 
satisfaction." 

W. S. Sutton, Superintendent City Schools, Houston, Texas. " The 
analysis, properly taught, causes pupils to become clear, logical reasoners. 
Teachers who once catch the spirit of analysis have little difficult^/ in 
presenting and teaching any principle of Arithmetic." 



GiLDERSLEEVE'S 



Latin Series. 



BY 

B. L. GILDERSLEEVE, Ph.D., LL.D., 

PROJfBSSOR OF GREEK IN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BALTIMORE. 



Standard works for class use or reference. Widely 
known and admired wherever the classics are taught. No 
scholar in America surpasses, very few equal, the author in 
his command and knowledge of the Latin language. The 
marks of his scholarly ability are noticeable throughout the 
entire series. 

GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN P R I M E R . — Revised 

Edition. 

Maximum of forms, minimum of syntax. Early contact 
with the language in mass — these are the principles upon 
which this book was first prepared, and after a practical 
test of many years in the class-room these same principles 
were held to in its revision. The concurrent testimony of 
hundreds of teachers attests the wisdom of the plan. 

Price, 75 cents. 

GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN GRAMMAR. 

No Grammar has higher authority, or is more quoted as 
an authority. It has exceptional clearness, freshness, and 
logical disposition of material. It skillfully adapts modern 
Latin scholarship to school-room use. 

The treatment of inflectional forms is plain and conven- 
ient. In the syntax the analysis and statement of principles 
of construction are sharp and clear. Conditional sentences, 
oratio obliqua, etc., nowhere find so satisfactory treatment. 



GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN SERIES, 



The rendering of Latin idioms into the corresponding 
English idioms has won the highest admiration. Prosody 
and Formation of Words present the results of modern 
investigation simply and clearly. A full Index of Verbs and 
of Syntax facilitates reference. Price, $i.oo. 

GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN READER 

contains selections from Latin authors, with Notes, Refer- 
ences to the Grammar, and a Vocabulary which is complete 
in its adaptation to the text of the book. The selections 
comprise : 

(i) Fables and stories ; (2) De Gestis Alexandri, an 
interesting narrative, chiefly from Curtius ; (3) De Bello 
Gallico, Liber V., in which the text is accompanied by a full 
syntactical commentary, with grammatical references, thus 
furnishing appliances for an admirable training in Latin 
syntax. Price, 72 cents. 

GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN EXERCISE BOOK 

is a book of Latin Prose Composition. Its several courses 
are suited to the various stages of advancement of students. 
The Exercises are most aptly worded, and are distinguished 
by the same sharp, idiomatic precision of expression that 
characterizes the Grammar. Price, 72 cents. 

FIFTH BOOK OF CAESAR, 

With Syntactical Commentary, Explanatory Notes, 
Vocabulary, and a Map of Northern Gaul. 

This Fifth Book is deservedly a favorite with pupils and 
teachers alike, both for its themes and the comparative ease 
of its style. This edition does not necessarily require the 
use of any special Grammar, the syntactical rules being 
concisely stated in the Commentary. Constant reference is, 
however, made to Gildersleeve*s Grammar. Price, 30 cents. 



GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN SERIES, 



E. M. Pease, Prof. Le land Stanford University, Cal. '* In Prof. 
Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, syntax is not an artful arrangement of the 
dry bones of the language, but a scholarly and comprehensive treatment 
of the sentence in the order of complexity — the natural order — illustrated 
by pointed examples inimitably rendered into English. It leads to a 
broad conception of language, and for pupil or teacher is, I think, the 
best text-book yet published.** 

E. H. Wilson, Wilson Grammar School, Middletown, Conn. **A 
year ago last September I started a class of small boys in Gildersleeve's 
New Latin Primer. It is the best book for beginners I have ever used." 

E. P. Morris, Prof Latin, Williams College, Mass. "Gilder- 
sleeve's Latin Grammar is a thought-out book, clear-cut and masterly, 
not a timid compilation, as some of our American Grammars are. Of 
course, any praise of Prof. Gildersleeve's work is unnecessary, but I 
have had it on my conscience to tell you how very much I admire the 
book." 

Helen Magill, Howard College Institute, West Bridgewater, Mass. 
**But this Primer [Gildersleeve's], which I have only lately had occasion 
to examine for use, seems to me, in a very remarkable way, to produce 
a different impression , being interesting, very much alive, and somehow 
very Latin, very classical. Such a book, when good, may be a great 
help to a busy teacher." 

Prof. J. E. Goodrich, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vt. 
**If I had to select a series of Latin text-books for exclusive use in a 
preparatory school, I know of none which I should re-examine with so 
many prepossessions in its favor as that of Gildersleeve. These books 
are conducted on the true principles, and keep the proper order and 
balance between practice and theory. Prof. Gildersleeve's rules are 
clearly and sharply, as well as briefly, stated ; his translations of passages 
cited are models of idiomatic and felicitous rendering. The Grammar, 
while not a cyclopaedia of Latin syntax, is amply sufficient for all 
demands of the usual college course." ^^ 

Prof. Walter Blair, Hampden Sidney College, Va. " The high esti- 
mate which I conceived from the first of Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar 
is, upon long acquaintance, in no degree diminished. I know of no 
other attempt to provide the phenomena of the language with a con- 
sistent rational basis, which is at once so perspicuous, so just, so neat, 
so bold, and so successful." 

Prof. Thos. R. Price, Columbia College, New York City, late 
University of Virginia. *'The Latin series of Dr. Gildersleeve has 



GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN SERIES, 



always seemed to me to be the best of its kind. In the Primer, espe- 
cially, the sharpness of his method, his intense precision of statement, 
and his nice accuracy of scholarship, show conspicuous. The study of 
Latin gains wherever his books are used. In respect of arrangement, 
nicety of expression, choice of idioms, and all-pervading scholarship, his 
Latin Exercise Book is, I think, far better than any other text-book in 
English." 

Prof. Ashley D. Hurt, late Male High School ^ Louisville y Ky, 
*' I do not know a series as useful as Dr. Gildersleeve's. For simplicity, 
clearness, and logical arrangement, the Grammar could not be surpassed. 
The teachers in our Preparatory Department have one hundred boys in 
the New Latin Primer, and are getting even better results than with 
the old one." 

Prof. Caskie Harrison, P'pin. Brooklyn Latin School, Brooklyn , 
N, Y. "Prof. Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar is likely to remain his 
masterpiece and to prove unsurpassed during many generations of school 
boys. His power of interpretation and his felicity of statement have 
been rarely equaled. His other works alike exhibit the characteristics 
of the writer." 

Robert H. Tunstall, Prin. Norfolk Academy , Norfolk, Va. *'In 
logical arrangement, in breadth and depth of scope, in its bold, yet 
never-erring treatment of some of the subtlest phrases of human speech 
and thought, Gildersleeve's Grammar is without an equal, it seems to 
me, among text-books. Its many happinesses of translation, alone, 
would make it a book worth having. In the new edition of the Latin 
Primer I can see many improvements on the old edition, notably in the 
direction of simplicity. I believe the revision will many times increase 
the popularity and usefulness of the book." 

Prof. Charles Short, Columbia College, New York City. "We 
have used for several years in the Freshman Class Prof. Gildersleeve's 
Latin Exercise Book, and have been greatly pleased with the book. " 

C. T. R. Smith, Lansingburgh, NY, " The Primer is capital. I 
have never before used a book which made the study pleasant for be- 
ginners without a world of labor on the part of the teacher." 

W. Gordon McCabe, University School, Petersburg, Va, " Prof. 
Gildersleeve's Grammar is, beyond question, superior to any other ever 
published in America, and I am proud to see it extorting recognition 
wherever thorough scholarship has attained a footing. I have put the 
New Primer and the Fifth Book of Caesar into the hands of two large 
classes." 



German Simplified. 
Spanish Simplified. 



BY 



AUGUSTIN KNOFLACH, 

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE BERLIN SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF MODERN 

LANGUAGES. 



These books provide complete courses of instruction 
for purposes of reading, business, and travel. 

W, H. Carpenter, Instructor in German^ Columbia College^ New 
York City, — ** More nearly than any other book I have recently ex- 
amined, it [German Simplified] approaches my idea of what a beginner's 
book should be." 

H. W. Johnston, Prof. Modern Languages, Illinois College, 
Jacksonville, III. — *' I find it [German Simplified] a good book for class 
use, even better than I expected. Your method is all that you claim 
for it." 

C. W. Hut son, University of Mississippi , Oxford y Miss. — "An ad- 
mirable book [German Simplified]. I like its simplicity and its 
gradual introduction of idioms and grammatical forms." 

J. Bickler, City Superintendeitt of Schools, Galveston, Texas. — '* It 
[German Simplified] meets all the wants of the German class of the 
Y.M.C.A. of this city as no other book that I am acquainted with can." 

W. G. Crosby, Granger Place ScAool, Canandaigua, N. V. — ** ' Kno- 
flach*s Spanish Simplified ' is simply admirable — the best elementary 
book I have used." 

W. H. Long, Waco, Texas. — *' A more thorough examination of 
* Spanish Simplified ' increases my admiration of the book. The work 
has great merit. I shall use it in my next Spanish class." 

L. W. Lyon, Eagle Pass, Texas. — " * Spanish Simplified' meets my 
ideal of a text-book. I shall use it in my Spanish class. It is by all 
odds the best arranged book for self-instruction which has appeared." 



GERMAN SIMPLIFIED, . - - - $i.oo 
SPANISH SIMPLIFIED, i.oo 

Pamphlet Editions (especially for self-instruction), 

per set of 12 numbers, with keys, - - 1.20 



USEFUL AND ORNAMENTAL. 

Maury's Wall Maps. 

Most Useful Aids in Class Instruction in Geography. 

I. The World. VI. Asia. 

II. North America. VII. Africa. 

III. The United States. VIII. Physical and Com- 

IV. South America. mercial Chart of the 
V. Europe. World. 



These beautiful maps are carefully drawn and are engraved 
in the best style of lithographic art. They are adapted to 
accompany any text-book of Geography. 

The outlines and lettering are distinct. The natural 
features and political divisions of the continents are clearly 
presented. 

The great water-sheds and drainage-systems 
of the earth are presented to the eye in a very instructive 
manner. 

The maps of the five grand divisions of the world are on 
the same uniform scale, and thus present a correct view 
of the comparative sizes of the continents. 

The artistic finish and coloring of the maps furnish a 
pleasing pictorial effect. 

They are made in the most durable manner, being 
well colored, varnished, bound, mounted on rollers, and 
backed with heavy muslin. 

The size of each map is 26x34 inches; except the 
United States, which is 30 x 48 inches. 

Price (packed ready for shipment), $10.00. 



LEADING PUBLICATIONS 



OF THE 



UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO. 



MAURY'S GEOGRAPHIES. Two books, 

" PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 

HOLMES' NEW READERS. Five books. 

DAVIS' READING BOOKS. Four books. 

LIPPINCOTT'S POPULAR READERS. Six books. 

HOLMES', LIPPINCOTT'S, HANSELL'S SPELLING 
BOOKS. 

THE CLARENDON DICTIONARY. 

VENABLE'S NEW ARITHMETICS, ALGEBRAS, 
GEOMETRY. 

SANFORD'S ARITHMETICS AND ALGEBRA. 

NICHOLSON'S ARITHMETICS AND ALGEBRA. 

HOLMES' HISTORY OF UNITED STATES. 

HANSELL'S HISTORIES OF UNITED STATES. 

HANSELL'S COPY-BOOKS. 

LOWRY'S ELEMENTS OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

STATE HISTORIES: TEXAS, GEORGIA, MISS., ETC 

VENABLE'S (F. P.), QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS. 

UNIVERSITY SERIES COPY-BOOKS. 

GILDERSLEEVE'S LATIN SERIES. (1894Edn.Lat.Gram.) 

KNOFLACH'S GERMAN AND SPANISH. 

ETC., ETC., ETC. 

press of J. J. Little & Co., Astor Place, New York 



